Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he backs US President Donald Trump’s plan to end Israel’s nearly two-year war against Hamas in Gaza.
“I believe that today, we’re taking a critical step towards both ending the war in Gaza and setting the stage for dramatically advancing peace in the Middle East,” Netanyahu said at the White House on Monday.
Securing Israel’s agreement for the deal would mark a dramatic breakthrough in ending a conflict that has devastated Gaza, cost tens of thousands of lives, triggered conflict across the region and left Israel increasingly isolated.
Speaking alongside the Israeli leader, Trump said peace would be his “crowning achievement”.
The plan says Trump would chair an international supervisory body — dubbed the Board of Peace — to provide oversight of a Palestinian committee that would administer Gaza.
A technocratic, apolitical committee of Palestinians would administer Gaza, with Trump’s international transitional body providing oversight. Other international figures would be appointed to the board, including former British prime minister Tony Blair.
Trump thanked Netanyahu “for agreeing to the plan and for trusting that if we work together, we can bring an end to the death and destruction that we’ve seen for so many years”.
It was not immediately clear whether Hamas would accept the proposal. An official briefed on talks said Qatar’s prime minister and Egypt’s intelligence chief met negotiators from the militant group in Doha and shared the plan. The negotiators said they would review it in good faith and provide a response, the official said.
Trump said he would give Israel his “full backing” to eliminate Hamas if the group does not agree the plan. Netanyahu warned that if the militant group rejected the US proposal “then Israel will finish the job by itself”.
Trump and Netanyahu declined to answer any further questions until there were “signatures and approvals from a lot of different countries involved in this”.
Netanyahu also held a call alongside Trump on Monday with Qatar’s prime minister where the Israeli leader “expressed his deep regret” that an Israeli missile strike this month “against Hamas targets in Qatar unintentionally killed a Qatari serviceman”, according to the White House.
The US plan calls for an immediate end to the conflict and for all the remaining hostages held in Gaza to be released within 72 hours of Israel “publicly” accepting the deal.
Hamas, which triggered the war with its October 7 2023 attack on Israel, would have no role in the governance of Gaza. Its fighters would be disarmed and its members would be granted amnesty if they “commit to peaceful coexistence and to decommission their weapons”.
Members of the militant group who chose to leave the enclave would also be assured of “safe passage” to receiving countries.
The plan states no one would be forced to leave Gaza, with Trump departing from his earlier plan to empty the strip of Palestinians and transform it into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.
Once all the Israeli hostages were freed, Israel would release 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences, as well as 1,700 Gazans who were detained after the October 7 2023 attack.
There would be a massive surge of aid into the strip, parts of which are enduring famine, according to UN agencies, while a “Trump economic development plan to rebuild and energise Gaza will be created by convening a panel of experts”.
European, Arab and Muslim leaders on Monday largely welcomed Trump’s announcement, and pledged to work with the US to enact a comprehensive agreement. But some important allies appeared to express doubts, even as they praised the president’s leadership.
The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Qatar and Egypt said in a joint statement they were committed to working with Washington to enact a deal that ensures, among other things, a “full Israeli withdrawal” from Gaza.
They referred to a path to peace “on the basis of the two-state solution, under which Gaza is fully integrated with the West Bank in a Palestinian state” — a vision that Netanyahu has categorically rejected.
UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, president of France, urged all sides to accept the plan so that implementation can begin.
The US’s plan envisages a future role for the Palestinian Authority, which administers limited parts of the occupied West Bank, in running Gaza once it is reformed. It also said Trump’s international supervisory board would handle the funding for the redevelopment of Gaza until such time as the PA “has completed its reform programme”.
The plan also nods to Palestinian aspirations for a state, saying that with Gaza’s redevelopment and a PA reform programme, “the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”.
The US will work with “Arab and international partners to develop a temporary international stabilisation force to immediately deploy in Gaza”, according to the plan. The force would “train and provide support to vetted Palestinian police forces in Gaza”.
Trump last week presented the plan, which his son-in-law Jared Kushner was heavily involved in drafting, to Arab and Muslim leaders, who warmly welcomed the proposals. However, they wanted to see a greater role for the PA.
Netanyahu is likely to face an intense backlash from far-right allies in his governing coalition who have repeatedly rejected any permanent end to the war before Hamas’s complete defeat at the hands of the Israeli military.
Netanyahu and these far-right figures in this government have also said the PA must have no role in Gaza and have vociferously rejected any moves towards the establishment of a Palestinian state.
A backlash risks unravelling the prime minister’s coalition and forcing him into early elections.
Netanyahu said Gaza would be demilitarised and Israel would retain security responsibility, including a security perimeter “for the foreseeable future”.
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