Yesterday, at noon Egypt time, Israel and Hamas agreed to implement the first stage of President Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan by implementing an immediate cease-fire, a partial withdrawal of Israeli forces, and the release by Hamas of 48 Israeli hostages, 20 of whom are believed to be alive. Israel also agreed to release almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, including about 250 who were serving life sentences, primarily for terrorism-related charges.
As I explained in my October 3 American Greatness article, Trump’s peace plan is bold and may not ultimately succeed. There is work to be done to finalize other stages of this agreement. Nevertheless, it is hard to exaggerate the significance of Israel and Hamas agreeing to the critical first stage.
Just a few weeks ago, few believed Hamas would ever release its hostages, never mind all of them at once. It also appeared unlikely that either side would agree to a cease-fire. Moreover, Hamas’s initial answer on October 3 of “yes, but” to the 20-point plan appeared to be the same response that caused previous peace plans to fail.
President Trump and his negotiating team were not deterred by Hamas’s initial ambiguous answer to the 20-point plan. Diplomats from the U.S., Egypt, Qatar, and the UAE instead engaged in intensive negotiations over the last week to get past Hamas’s objections and implement the first stage to quickly free all of the Israeli hostages, a cease-fire, and a partial Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Releasing all the Israeli hostages is a significant concession for Hamas because it has regarded them as essential bargaining chips.
There will probably be difficult negotiations ahead to convince Hamas to agree to other parts of the deal, such as disarming, barring the terrorist group from any role in post-war Gaza, the international force that will be deployed to Gaza, how reconstruction will be conducted, and other issues. I believe it is likely that Hamas’s agreement to the first stage bodes well for its agreement to the rest of the deal.
The 20-point peace plan is a masterpiece because it gained Arab and Israeli support and provided a way to end the war with or without Hamas’s agreement. If Hamas rejects this deal, it has nowhere to go, and rebuilding of the Gaza Strip and a new administration will occur without it.
This deal was only possible because of President Trump’s dogged determination to end this war by establishing himself as a trusted mediator between Israel and Arab states. Trump started this effort a week after he won the 2024 election when he named Steve Witkoff as his Middle East peace envoy and immediately sent him to meet with Gulf state leaders. Witkoff’s efforts resulted in a cease-fire agreement on January 19, 2025, that lasted three months and the release of 30 hostages.
Trump also took his first working foreign trip to the Persian Gulf to discuss his peace efforts with regional leaders and repair U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, which President Biden’s incompetent foreign policy had damaged.
President Trump also salvaged U.S. relations with Israel. President Biden feuded with Prime Minister Netanyahu, withheld weapons from Israel, and tried to force it into surrender deals with Hamas. Trump backed Israel’s war against Hamas and established himself as the most pro-Israel president in history. Trump also supported—and later joined—Israel’s unprecedented air strikes last June to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
President Trump said at a cabinet meeting yesterday that the U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites was a crucial element in the peace plan because if Iran were still close to producing nuclear weapons, there would be a “big dark cloud” over the plan.
At the same time, Trump proved that he would pressure Prime Minister Netanyahu to make peace. He told Netanyahu that it was time to end the war because “Israel cannot fight the world.” Trump said he would not allow Israel to annex the West Bank or Gaza. Trump also opposed Israel’s recent attack against Qatar and directed Netanyahu to apologize for this attack to Qatari Prime Minister al-Thani. These statements and actions were crucial to convincing Arab states that Trump would be an honest broker to end the Gaza War.
Trump didn’t back down after previous peace plans failed. He ignored demands by the UN, European leaders, and critics at home that Israel halt the war and allow Hamas to resume control of Gaza. While European states were trying to appease Hamas by recognizing a Palestinian state without any concessions from the terrorist group, Trump’s negotiators were working behind the scenes with America’s Arab allies to prepare a comprehensive peace plan and broad support for the plan.
Even if the 20-point plan only succeeds in freeing the remaining Israeli hostages, this will be a significant accomplishment for President Trump’s peace efforts. But if both sides accept and cooperate with the entire 20-point plan and end the war in Gaza, it will be a monumental diplomatic achievement for President Trump and his negotiating team that will more than qualify Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. But more importantly, Trump’s success as an honest broker in ending the Gaza War will give him significant leverage to achieve another huge diplomatic victory: convincing Russian President Putin and Ukrainian President Zelensky to end the horrific Ukraine War.
This week’s events in the Middle East are more evidence that the second Trump term is proving to be a truly historic presidency.
Fred Fleitz previously served as National Security Council chief of staff, a CIA analyst, and a House Intelligence Committee staff member. He is the Vice Chair of the America First Policy Institute’s Center for American Security.