The White House has released a 20-point document titled “President Donald J. Trump’s Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict.” It would install a transitional governance structure under a “Board of Peace,” chaired by Trump, with figures such as former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair expected to participate.
The plan posted on social media opens with promises:
- Gaza will be a deradicalized terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbors.
- Gaza will be redeveloped for the benefit of the people of Gaza, who have suffered more than enough.
It then outlines ceasefire terms, staged withdrawals, prisoner exchanges, and international administration.
Yet the omissions are glaring. Gaza’s people are cast not as survivors of nearly two years of bombardment but as subjects requiring “deradicalization.” Destroyed homes are reimagined as redevelopment projects under international management. What is framed as peace is, in substance, a program of control and investment.
In this way, the plan recasts civilian suffering as an administrative problem. It presents U.S. and allied oversight as humanitarian necessity while leaving accountability for the deaths and devastation absent. The result is less a pathway to peace than a managed aftermath, designed by those who supplied the war effort in the first place.
The document centers on the hostage issue. It promises that within 72 hours of Israeli acceptance, “all hostages, alive and deceased, will be returned.”
It sets a grim exchange rate: “For every Israeli hostage whose remains are released, Israel will release the remains of 15 deceased Gazans.” Israel would also release 250 life-sentence prisoners and 1,700 Gazans detained after October 7, “including all women and children.”
According to the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, by December 2024 Israel held 9,619 Palestinians on what it classifies as “security” grounds, including more than 2,200 from Gaza. At the same time, Hamas was still holding 48 hostages, including 47 of those abducted on October 7, 2023.
The plan pledges that “full aid will be immediately sent into the Gaza Strip” once an agreement is reached. It lists repairs to water, electricity, hospitals, and bakeries, and rubble removal. Aid would be routed through the UN, the Red Crescent, and other agencies, with Rafah crossing opened under new mechanisms.
The language reads generous, but it is an admission: If aid can flow “immediately,” then its absence until now was imposed. That is, food, medicine, and fuel were deliberately withheld from a starving population. Trump’s plan re-frames deprivation not as a violation of law, but as a bargaining chip.
It also states, “No one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return.” This contradicts Trump’s earlier rejection of a right of return and collides with the reality of mass displacement caused by bombardment.
The plan offers Hamas a way out: “Members who commit to peaceful co-existence and decommission their weapons will be given amnesty.” Others would receive “safe passage to receiving countries.”
Far from eliminating Hamas, the plan offers reintegration or exile to the group used to justify mass destruction, while civilians bear the cost.
The plan adds that “Hamas and other factions” will have no role in governance and that all tunnels and weapons facilities “will be destroyed and not rebuilt.” Weapons are to be placed “permanently beyond use” under independent monitors, supported by an “internationally funded buy-back and reintegration program.” Regional partners are to guarantee compliance.
Hamas has already agreed to release hostages, but rejects disarmament. Its statement was clear: “Armed resistance is the right of the Palestinian people as long as there is occupation.”
The plan proposes:
Gaza will be governed under the temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee … with oversight and supervision by a new international transitional body, the “Board of Peace,” which will be headed and chaired by President Donald J. Trump, with other members and heads of State to be announced, including Former Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The Board would “set the framework and handle the funding for the redevelopment of Gaza.”
The idea was met with sharp criticism. Detractors described it as a “board of colonial masters,” designed to manage Gaza from outside rather than allow Palestinians to decide their own future.
Blair’s inclusion was especially contentious. As Quartet envoy after leaving office, he was faulted for prioritizing economic projects over political progress. His institute has been tied to the so-called day-after planning efforts for Gaza. His involvement is controversial for two reasons.
First, the timing. The Times of Israel reported that Blair’s team began working on redevelopment schemes “in the early months” of Israel’s Gaza campaign, raising concerns that planning for the enclave’s future was being drafted in parallel with its destruction.
Second, the connections. Blair has maintained close ties with Jared Kushner, who during the Trump administration played a central role in Middle-East policy and described Gaza as a “valuable waterfront property.” This association deepens criticism that postwar planning is less about justice or sovereignty than about turning devastation into an investment opportunity. Recent reports suggest Kushner and Blair strongly influenced Trump’s plan.
More fundamentally, critics point to Blair’s role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a war that killed hundreds of thousands and destabilized the region. For many, Blair “belongs in the Hague,” not in Gaza’s governance.
The plan sets out a “Trump economic development plan” modeled on “thriving modern miracle cities in the Middle East.” It pledges a special economic zone with preferential tariffs and access rates. On paper, Gaza is presented as an investment hub.
These commitments are paired with new security arrangements. A U.S.-organized International Stabilization Force (ISF) would “immediately deploy in Gaza,” train vetted Palestinian police, and consult with Jordan and Egypt. It would also work with Israel and Egypt to secure borders, block munitions, and oversee the “rapid and secure flow of goods.”
Aid and investment are thus tied directly to security controls. Redevelopment is offered only under international policing and border arrangements that preserve U.S. and Israeli oversight.
The plan assures that “Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza.” Yet withdrawal is conditional. The IDF will hand territory to the ISF only after “standards, milestones, and timeframes linked to demilitarization” are met. A security perimeter will remain until Gaza is judged “properly secure from any resurgent terror threat.”
If Hamas refuses, aid will proceed only in areas declared “terror-free,” effectively dividing Gaza into compliant and non-compliant zones.
The closing provisions promise “interfaith dialogue” to reshape “mindsets and narratives” and suggest Palestinian self-determination will be possible only once the Palestinian Authority (PA) “faithfully” completes reforms. The United States will broker a “political horizon,” but one defined in Washington and enforced by Israel and its partners.
What is presented as a path to peace is, in fact, a framework for indefinite supervision. Statehood is reduced to a distant possibility, contingent on compliance with conditions set by those who funded the war.
The plan avoids legal accountability for Gaza’s current situation. International institutions do not.
As journalist Caitlin Johnstone observed, every major human-rights body has identified Israel’s actions in Gaza as crimes, with many labeling them genocide — and no equivalent body has argued the opposite. These include:
2. The International Association of Genocide Scholars
3. B’Tselem (an Israeli organization)
4. Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (another Israeli organization)
7. The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights
9. The International Federation for Human Rights
10. The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention
Together, their findings form a consensus: What has unfolded in Gaza is not merely war, but the systematic destruction of a people.
It must be stressed that there is no question that Hamas is a terrorist organization that committed crimes on October 7 and must bear responsibility. (For all its extremism, however, it was tolerated and even propped up by the Netanyahu government to weaken the Palestinian Authority.) Since then, Israel’s campaign — heavily financed by both the Biden and Trump administrations — has produced mass civilian deaths, the destruction of infrastructure, and the forced displacement of nearly the entire population. These are not incidental tragedies, but documented violations of international law.
With this backdrop of terrorism on one side and state-led mass atrocities on the other, any plan that erases both Hamas’ and Israel’s conduct is not a roadmap to peace. It is a political cover for impunity, paired with investment and rebuilding opportunities dressed up as humanitarian concern.