In a rambling, self-congratulatory speech at the White House on 29 September, Donald Trump proclaimed the advent of “eternal peace in the Middle East”. It was a “big, big day,” the US president declared, “a historic day”, perhaps even “one of the great days ever in civilisation”. The event had been billed as a joint press conference with the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but it soon became clear that it would primarily take the form of a Trumpian stream of consciousness instead. Netanyahu smiled and nodded along. Neither took any questions at the end, presumably because they do not have answers to the urgent questions this plan raises.
This did not stop Trump from holding forth on the brilliance of his proposal. This was about much more than Gaza, he said, as they were talking about the “whole deal, everything getting solved”, by which he appeared to mean the entire region setting aside its differences and signing up for peace. He veered off on a tangent about the correct pronunciation of “Abraham Accords”, a set of agreements negotiated during his first term that normalised relations between Israel and several Arab states.
As Trump was speaking, the White House released the text of a 20-point plan to end the war in Gaza and rebuild the Palestinian territory. If both sides agreed, the proposal said, the fighting would immediately stop and all remaining Israeli hostages, and the bodies of those who had died, would be returned to Israel within 72 hours, while Israel would release nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. Hamas would then commit to “peaceful coexistence” and give up their weapons in exchange for amnesty. “Full aid” would begin flowing into the Gaza Strip, water, electricity, and sewage facilities would be restored, and the enclave would be redeveloped “for the benefit of the people of Gaza, who have suffered more than enough”.
The key to this peace, Trump said, would be a new transitional body, known as the “Board of Peace”, that would oversee the Gaza Strip until such time as it could be handed over to the Palestinian Authority, which administers part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. (A temporary “International Stabilisation Force” would be deployed to secure Gaza, although it was not clear any states had yet committed troops.) At the request of, apparently, everyone he had consulted, Trump announced that he would chair the new board himself.
The new peace board would include other notable members such as the former British prime minister Tony Blair. This might strike some as an odd choice given that he is best known in the region for his enthusiastic support of the disastrous US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and was assailed by members of his own cabinet for his support of Israel during its war with Lebanon in 2006. He then tried and failed to broker peace in the Middle East as a special envoy for the Quartet, a group made up of the UN, the US, the EU, and Russia, after leaving No 10 in 2007. (Staff at the Tony Blair Institute also reportedly took part in a project led by the Boston Consulting Group earlier this year that envisaged transforming Gaza with mega-projects including a “Trump Riviera” tourist resort. The foundation said its staff had never authored or endorsed any project that would involve forcibly relocating the residents of Gaza. Any suggestion that Palestinians would be expelled from Gaza was absent from Trump’s 20-point plan.)
Yet Trump is convinced that Blair is the man for this particular plan, which the former prime minister has already endorsed. “President Trump has put down a bold and intelligent plan which, if agreed, can end the war, bring immediate relief to Gaza, the chance of a brighter and better future for its people, while ensuring Israel’s absolute and enduring security and the release of all hostages,” he wrote on X shortly after Trump’s announcement. (The phrase “war criminal” featured prominently in the reponses that followed.)
The key clause here is “if agreed,” because, as Trump meandered on, it became clear that his peace plan had not, in fact, been agreed by Hamas. “We’re at a minimum, very, very close,” he said, despite the fact that his proposal was not shared with the militant group until after the press conference. By the following day, Hamas officials had said they were reviewing the plan “in good faith” but at the time the New Statesman went to press it was unclear when a response would be issued. In April, Hamas rejected demands to give up their weapons as a “red line”. During his press conference, Trump warned that “if Hamas rejects the deal” then Netanyahu would “have our full backing to do what you would have to do”.
This was clearly what Netanyahu wanted to hear. When he finally spoke at the news conference, he said he supported Trump’s plan to end the war, which was significant in itself and the apparent result of strong-arming behind the scenes at the White House. But Netanyahu added that if Hamas rejected the plan, “or if they supposedly accept it and then basically do everything to counter it, then Israel will finish the job by itself”. He did not sound like a leader who was preparing to usher in an era of eternal peace anytime soon.
On the contrary, over the course of years of devastating conflict, Netanyahu has repeatedly demonstrated that his preference is to continue the war. He understands that his political future, and perhaps his personal freedom, given the corruption charges against him in a trial that has been repeatedly delayed on supposed national security grounds, depends on never-ending conflict. Peace is a perilous proposition for Netanyahu, who seems to believe it is safer for him to press on despite the long-term geopolitical risks, as Israel alienates many of its former friends and allies.
Even in the US, where a majority of voters have long sided with Israel, recent polls show support has plummeted as further evidence of atrocities against Palestinians is uncovered, with marginally more voters now saying they sympathise with the plight of Palestinians over Israelis. This shift could have significant implications for US foreign policy and Israel’s options beyond Trump. Exasperated with Netanyahu’s intransigence, the UK, France, Canada and Australia formally recognised a Palestininian state at the UN General Assembly in September.
In one sense, Netanyahu can claim a series of remarkable military victories. It is easy to forget now, two years on, how formidable Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” once seemed or how reckless the notion of Israel fighting a two-front war against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon was seen to be. Today, both organisations are severely degraded, although not entirely destroyed. Hezbollah’s long-feared leader Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated in an Israeli air strike in September 2024, followed by much of his chain of command. Israel has also decimated Hamas’s senior leadership, killing the organisation’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh, and then his successor, Yahya Sinwar, last year. In response, Tehran has merely advertised its weakness, launching waves of missile and drone attacks that were almost all shot down by Israel and its allies.
Yet Netanyahu has no evident strategy beyond perpetuating a conflict whose consequences are already reverberating across the region. In neighbouring Syria, for instance, a coalition of rebels took advantage of Tehran’s apparent impotence to mount a lightning offensive to topple Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorial regime in Syria in November 2024. Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former Al Qaeda operative who led the Islamist militant group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), took power as the head of a new provisional government. Israel took advantage of the chaos to cross into the internationally monitored buffer zone between the two countries and seize part of the Golan Heights, which Netanyahu vowed would remain under Israeli control until “another suitable arrangement” could be found. “I said we would change the Middle East,” he said on 15 December. “And we are indeed doing so.”
He also succeeded in convincing Trump to join his 12-day war on Iran in June, which culminated in the US bombing three Iranian nuclear sites. Trump duly pronounced the war won and Iran’s nuclear programme “completely and totally obliterated,” although non-proliferation experts, and even parts of the US intelligence community, were less convinced that the deeply buried facilities had been permanently destroyed.
The Israeli prime minister does, at least, appear to understand that he risks turning his country into a pariah. Addressing a conference in Jerusalem on 15 September, as he prepared to launch his ground assault on Gaza City, Netanyahu warned that Israel needed to work towards more economic self-sufficiency and become a more militarised society – to become a “super Sparta” of the Middle East. The Tel Aviv stock market and the value of Israel’s currency, the Shekel, promptly fell. It was an unfortunate analogy. For all the lionisation of the ancient Greek city-state’s valour in prevailing over vastly more powerful enemies, Sparta was ultimately defeated and destroyed. There is a lesson in that fate for Netanyahu, and his supporters in the White House and beyond, if only they are prepared to take it: a series of military victories is not the same as a winning long-term strategy.
Nor will it necessarily yield peace. Once Netanyahu returned to Israel, he appeared to push back against aspects of Trump’s plan. In a video posted to Telegram, he insisted the IDF would remain in most of Gaza, and he would “not agree” to a Palestinian state even though the plan calls for a “credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”. Perhaps Netanyahu was simply making the plan more palatable to his far-right coalition partners. But it was striking that he also emphasised Trump’s “full backing to complete the military operation and eliminate” Hamas if the militant group refused to comply. Meanwhile eight regional foreign ministers affirmed their support for the plan if it meant a “full Israeli withdrawal” and a path to a “just peace on the basis of the two-state solution”. At the same time, Israeli leaflets fluttered down over Gaza City ordering residents to leave as IDF tanks continued their advance. The hard bargaining and the real challenge of delivering peace begins now. An end to this terrible war is in sight, but it is far from clear that either side is ready to abandon their fight, or that Trump will stay focused long enough to see his grand vision through.
[Further reading: Jeffrey Epstein haunts Donald Trump’s state visit]
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This article appears in the 01 Oct 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Life and Fate
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