United States President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are meeting in the White House for a fourth time this year on Monday as a plan for future governance of a Gaza decimated by Israel’s nearly two-year genocidal war circulates, and the ironclad relationship between the two countries could be tested.
Trump promised “greatness in the Middle East” and “something special” in another all-caps post on his Truth Social platform on Sunday. He has made repeated statements recently that it is time for the war to end.
Netanyahu, for his part, told Fox News that Israel is working with Washington to “make [the plan] a go”.
The 21-point “day after” war plan was first presented to Arab and Muslim leaders on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) meetings in New York last week.
According to numerous Israeli and Western reports, the plan says Hamas must release all 48 remaining captives in Gaza, about 20 of whom are believed to be alive, within two days.
Hamas fighters will allegedly be allowed to leave Gaza or offered amnesty if they renounce resistance. Significant humanitarian aid will be allowed into the famine-stricken enclave, some Palestinian prisoners will be released from Israeli military jails, and Israeli forces will gradually withdraw.
The Palestinian group said in a statement on Sunday that it had received no new proposal from mediators Egypt and Qatar, both of whom have reportedly received the Trump proposal.
But Hamas said it would consider a new offer to end the war, as its armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, warned that contact was lost with teams holding two Israeli captives in Gaza City amid an expanding Israeli ground invasion and aerial bombardment, which is killing dozens of Palestinian civilians daily and destroying the area further.
Netanyahu’s balancing act
The Israeli prime minister appears to be embracing the plan even though – if implemented as presented – it goes against some of his far-right government’s core positions.
Most notably, the vision claims to leave the door open for a future Palestinian state, something top Israeli leaders have said they would never allow.
The plan underscores that it does not want to forcibly expel Palestinians from Gaza, and that they will have a right of return if they choose to leave after two years of genocidal war has left most of the enclave in ruins.
That is, while Netanyahu’s top ministers and coalition partners, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, have fervently pushed for destroying what is left of Gaza and “encouraging voluntary migration” without return.
They want to cut off all food, water and medicine as Israel did for months, starting March 18 when it torpedoed a previous ceasefire with Hamas, leading to famine and mass starvation. And they want to rebuild illegal Israeli settlements inside Gaza after seizing and militarily controlling the area while annexing the occupied West Bank.
The two far-right hardliners, who live in illegal settlements, along with other ministers and leaders of violent settler organisations, and have been sanctioned by several Western governments, have already blasted the plan by Trump, whom they have repeatedly praised as Israel’s biggest-ever ally in the White House.
They believe Netanyahu has no mandate to accept such a deal without eliminating Hamas, which was set as a key goal of the war in October 2023.
But Netanyahu may be squeezed by Trump, whom he will want to appease after the White House’s unconditional support and diplomatic cover.
In the Israeli Knesset, Netanyahu’s coalition, led by his Likud party with 32 seats, is already on the precipice as it is running a minority government, which holds 60 out of 120 seats.
Two major ultra-Orthodox parties put Netanyahu in a tight spot when one quit the government and the other left the coalition in mid-July over failure to guarantee future exemption from military conscription for religious students amid the war.
Smotrich and Ben-Gvir’s parties hold 13 seats, meaning they could potentially topple Netanyahu’s much-criticised government and force new elections if they all pulled out of the coalition.
Ben-Gvir actually resigned from his cabinet post in January in protest against the ceasefire with Hamas that brought back a number of captives, but soon returned after Israel started bombing Gaza again.
But the far-right figures are unlikely to bring down the coalition anytime soon, as Israel continues to block most aid to Gaza while pushing deeper inside its largest urban centre with tanks and launching explosives from the air and sea.
Numerous Israeli raids and settler attacks are launched against Palestinians on a daily basis in the West Bank as Israel grabs more land and demolishes local homes despite Trump’s claim that he will not allow annexation of the territory.
Trump’s new proposal currently seems provisional at best, too, and will take a long time to implement even if it is agreed by all and manages to secure a UN mandate.
Structure of Gaza’s future governance
The plan put forward by Trump has been drafted in collaboration with Israel and an organisation run by Tony Blair, who was the United Kingdom’s prime minister during the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, based on false claims of weapons of mass destruction.
It considers appointing him as the head of a newly established entity called the Gaza International Transitional Authority (GITA), which would administer Gaza after Hamas is ousted for up to several years.
Israel’s Haaretz newspaper on Monday released a document that it said contained the full power structure of the authority, which puts senior international diplomats and businesspeople at the top and the Palestinians running things on the ground at the bottom.
The international board of GITA, which will initially be based in Egypt or elsewhere near but outside Gaza due to the chaotic situation created by Israel on the ground, could include a UN official, renowned Egyptian businessmen, and Muslim members in an attempt to build credibility.
It will reportedly have an executive secretariat, with five commissioners operating under it to oversee humanitarian affairs, reconstruction, legislation, security oversight, and coordination with the Palestinian Authority (PA), which is urged to undergo reforms for a promise it will take charge of governance at an undisclosed future timeline.
Under them will be a Palestinian technocratic authority appointed by the board to handle some implementation on the ground as a multinational stabilisation force takes charge of border crossings, Gaza’s coastline, and “perimeter zones” near Israel and Egypt’s borders that are currently occupied by Israel.
This is while Netanyahu and others have insisted Israel will have “security control” over the enclave.
GITA is envisaged to have a $90m management budget in the first year, bumped to $133.5m and $164m in the two years after that, respectively. Those figures do not include the top expenses, such as reconstruction and humanitarian aid.
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