US president Donald Trump hopes to announce early next year that Israel and Hamas are moving to the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire, despite huge obstacles ahead and many unanswered questions.
Trump’s 20-point ceasefire plan was signed in October and endorsed by the United Nations Security Council the following month.
Following the ceasefire announcement Hamas released the remaining 20 living hostages and, gradually, the bodies of the deceased captives taken during the attack on Israel on October 7th, 2023.
The remains of one hostage, police officer Ran Gvili, have yet to be returned. Searches continue in Gaza for his remains and prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has insisted Hamas must return the last body before the two sides move on to the next, more difficult stage of the peace deal.
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But Trump has indicated he intends to move forward to phase two of the ceasefire in any event.
Hamas and Israel repeatedly accuse each other of violating the ceasefire agreement. Nearly 400 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military since the truce went into effect in October, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Three Israeli soldiers have been killed by Hamas militants in that same period and there have been numerous exchanges of fire along the “yellow line”, behind which Israel has withdrawn.
Human rights groups have accused Israel of failing to uphold its commitments regarding the flow of humanitarian aid. They say it is blocking essential supplies, such as tents, from entering the enclave. Israel claims that such materials could be dual-use and thus potentially serve Hamas.
Since the ceasefire went into effect Gaza has been divided in two, along the temporary “yellow line” demarcation, which Israel’s military chief of staff recently referred to as a “new border line”, sparking speculation that Israel intends to remain there indefinitely.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) control some 53 per cent of the enclave along the border with Israel, while the western sector remains under Palestinian rule. Despite significant military loses during the two-year war, Hamas has reasserted its control in the western sector with its fighters making arrests, clamping down on opposition and even carrying out summary executions.
Trump and Netanyahu will meet in Mar-a-Lago, the president’s private estate in Florida, at the end of the month and Gaza will be high on the agenda.
Disarming Hamas and demilitarising the Gaza Strip is the most contentious clause in the second phase of the ceasefire. Until this happens most foreign countries will be reluctant to commit troops to secure the enclave and no reconstruction is likely to begin in Hamas-controlled areas.
The militant group, even when it conditionally accepted the Trump peace plan, made it clear it would not disarm.
Netanyahu raised doubts over whether an international force would be able to complete the task of disarming Hamas.
“Our friends in America want to try to establish an international force that will do the job,” he said. “We know that there are certain tasks that this force can do. They can’t do everything, and maybe they can’t do the main thing, but we’ll see.”
Mediators Egypt, Qatar and Turkey are pressing Hamas to agree to disarm and transfer power to a Palestinian technocratic committee that will administer the strip’s daily affairs, but so far without success.
Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya rejects the potential use of the International Stabilisation Force (ISF), mandated under the ceasefire deal, to disarm militant groups. He said the ISF should be limited to maintaining the ceasefire and separating the parties along Gaza’s border.
“We affirm that the resistance and its weapons are a legitimate right guaranteed under international law to all nations under occupation,” he said. “We are open to studying any proposals to preserve this right while guaranteeing the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, and self-determination for our Palestinian nation.”
Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau based in Doha, has indicated that the organisation is ready to discuss “freezing or storing” its weapons and would only be willing to surrender its arms to a future Palestinian state. Such a compromise is likely to be rejected out of hand by Israel.
Other Hamas officials have raised the possibility of handing over the group’s remaining supplies of heavy weapons-rockets and mortar bombs, while leaving light weapons intact.
But disarming Hamas is only one of the elements of the second phase of the ceasefire surrounded in uncertainty.
“The plan says many of the right things, but it’s not very clear what happens first and what happens next,” Norwegian foreign minister Espen Barth Eide told the Doha Forum earlier this month, warning that progress needs to be made this month or the region risks a return to war, “or descent into total anarchy”.
At the centre of the new plan for administering Gaza is the creation of a Board of Peace to be led by Trump and other world leaders. “It’ll be one of the most legendary boards ever. Everybody wants to be on it,” he said at a White House event earlier this month, adding that he will announce the board members in January.
The board is expected to have three tiers.
At the top will be the United States, along with Arab and western leaders.
The second tier will be an executive committee, which is likely to include US envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, the architects of the ceasefire agreement, along with former British prime minister Tony Blair, former UN special co-ordinator for the Middle East peace process Nikolay Mladenov, and Ajay Banga, the Indian-American businessman who serves as president of the World Bank.
The third tier will be mostly made up of business leaders.
Trump is reportedly assigning a two-star American general to lead the ISF, but the precise role of the international force is linked to the extent of Hamas disarmament.
Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the United Nations, says the ISF will be authorised to disarm Hamas by “all means necessary” but many of the Muslim sates slated to join the force will not be willing to engage Hamas militants.
Rico Sirait, spokesperson for the Indonesian defence ministry, said that while Jakarta is prepared to potentially deploy 20,000 troops, it expects them to be focused on health and reconstruction.
Ironically, the country most keen to send troops, Turkey, which has close ties to Hamas, is the most problematic from Israel’s point of view.
Ankara reportedly wants to dispatch a brigade-sized force of some 2,000 soldiers in a move that could pave the way for the deployment of soldiers by other Muslim states, such as Azerbaijan and Indonesia. Turkey argues its participation in the international force could guarantee the security of the Palestinian and international groups that would run Gaza because Hamas would not want confrontation with Turkish forces.
But Israel’s response, for now, is a firm no. “Countries that want to send armed forces should be at least fair to Israel,” said Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar. “Turkey, led by Erdogan, led a hostile approach against Israel so it is not reasonable for us to let their armed forces enter the Gaza Strip, and we will not agree to that and we said it to our American friends.”
If the ceasefire collapses then the temporary division of Gaza could become permanent, with Israel retaining control of the eastern area and possibly seizing further territory to the west.
Some commentators in Israel believe that the status quo suits Netanyahu because he has no real interest in moving to the deal’s second phase. Elections will be held in Israel in 2026. Moving to the next phase of the ceasefire will inevitably bring international pressure to make concessions to the Palestinians and possibly to grant the Palestinian Authority a role in the new administration – developments that would not go down well with his right-wing base.
Security tension on the Gaza border also helps to distract the public focus away from other, unpopular government actions, such as granting the ultra-Orthodox community sweeping exemptions from military service.
There is little optimism in the region that peace and tranquility will emerge in Gaza and a majority of Israelis believe war will resume in 2026.
However, much will depend on how badly Trump wants progress in Gaza. All the indications are that it remains, for now at least, a foreign policy priority for him, He still has his an eye on the elusive Nobel peace prize and his best bet to achieve this lies via a sustainable peace in Gaza.
