Washington: US President Donald Trump, on Monday, September 29, unveiled a 20-point peace proposal to end Israel’s devastating war on Gaza. Framed as a "comprehensive pathway to peace", the plan promises reconstruction, prisoner exchanges, and a demilitarised "new Gaza".
While Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) have accepted the proposal, Hamas says it "has not received a written plan" yet.
Yet, beneath the rhetoric of humanitarian relief lies a heavily asymmetrical deal that entrenches Israeli interests while leaving Palestinians with limited sovereignty, an uncertain future, and little agency in shaping their destiny.
Here are 10 major flaws in Trump's peace plan for Gaza:
1. No Mention of the West Bank
A glaring omission is the absence of any reference to the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian struggle cannot be compartmentalised into Gaza alone. By ring-fencing the plan around Gaza, Trump effectively sidelines the wider question of Palestinian self-determination. The occupation, settler expansion, and daily violence in the West Bank remain untouched, ensuring Israel faces no accountability there.
2. ISF or IDF in Disguise?
A key component of the plan is the creation of an International Stabilisation Force (ISF) to take over Gaza’s internal security. While presented as a multinational policing initiative, the ISF would work hand-in-glove with Israel and Egypt. In practice, this risks becoming a repackaged Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) presence, an occupying force in all but name. The ISF’s mandate to “secure borders” and oversee demilitarisation ensures that Israel’s security concerns remain paramount, while Gaza is left under semi-permanent external surveillance.
3. Who Will Join the ISF?
The proposal assumes Arab states will provide personnel for the ISF, but no country has committed to such a dangerous mission. Netanyahu himself has floated the idea of an Arab stabilisation force, but regional governments remain wary of being drawn into Gaza’s quagmire. With no confirmed participants, the ISF risks existing only on paper, or defaulting back to Israel’s control.
4. Governance by Trump and Tony Blair
Perhaps the most controversial element is the establishment of a technocratic transitional government supervised by a "Board of Peace", chaired personally by Trump with former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair in a senior role. This raises multiple red flags. First, it sidelines Palestinian leadership, placing the Strip under an externally imposed administration. Second, both Trump and Blair are polarising figures with deep ties to Western and Israeli interests. Far from neutral mediators, their presence suggests Gaza will be governed as a Western protectorate rather than an autonomous Palestinian territory.
5. No Clear Timeframe for Palestinian Authority Reform
The plan punts responsibility for long-term governance to a reformed Palestinian Authority (PA), but gives no timeline for when or how such reforms will occur. The PA, led by Mahmoud Abbas, has long been criticised as ineffective, corrupt, and increasingly irrelevant to younger Palestinians. Without elections, representation, or grassroots legitimacy, handing Gaza to the PA is not a solution but another deferral of Palestinian self-rule.
6. Asymmetrical Deal
The prisoner exchange arrangement reflects the imbalance: 250 life-sentence prisoners and 1,700 detainees released in exchange for all Israeli hostages, alive and dead. While framed as magnanimous, the structure cements Israel’s leverage and frames Palestinians as the side that must continually give up more to secure concessions. The overall tone of the plan reinforces Israel as the actor with veto power, while Gaza is treated as a territory to be re-engineered under external supervision.
7. Hardline Israeli Opposition
Even if Palestinians were to accept the plan, Israel’s far-right cabinet poses a serious obstacle. Ministers like Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir have already declared they will not accept anything short of Hamas’s total destruction. For Netanyahu, who has repeatedly derailed ceasefire efforts by imposing last-minute conditions, Trump’s plan could easily serve as a political fig leaf, invoked for diplomacy abroad while continuing military assaults on the ground.
8. Reconstruction Without Sovereignty
Trump’s economic vision of turning Gaza into a “special economic zone” and “thriving miracle city” sounds like glossy development rhetoric recycled from earlier failed peace efforts. Without sovereignty, control of borders, or political agency, reconstruction risks becoming a donor-driven exercise where Palestinians remain aid recipients rather than empowered citizens. The plan promises investment but not independence.
9. The Role of Aid and Famine
The plan mentions restoring humanitarian aid at January 2025 levels, around 600 trucks daily, but provides no mechanism to ensure this aid is actually delivered. Israel’s long record of restricting aid into Gaza casts doubt on whether this commitment would be honoured. Without enforceable guarantees, famine could persist under the guise of “conditional aid flows”.
10. Exclusion of Palestinians from the Process
Most critically, the plan reflects a top-down, externally imposed framework with little input from Palestinians themselves. Like the Abraham Accords, it is a negotiation over Palestinian lives conducted largely between Israel, the US, and a handful of Arab partners. By sidelining Palestinian voices, whether Hamas, the PA, or independent civil society, the proposal risks reproducing the very inequalities that fuelled the conflict in the first place.
Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza reads less like a roadmap to justice and more like a blueprint for pacification. Far from ending the cycle of violence, the plan risks entrenching the status quo under new branding — a Gaza reconstructed but not free, monitored but not sovereign, pacified but not at peace.
