The withdrawal of Israeli troops and the establishment of an international stabilisation force are key in securing long-term peace, but the plan is dangerously vague on these issues
Two years of death and destruction in Gaza ended once Israel and Hamas signed off on Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan. A ceasefire is in place. Humanitarian trucks have begun to roll in. Hostages and prisoners are being exchanged. Israel has begun a first-phase pullback from the territories it controls, and under Trump’s plan its troops will eventually be deployed in a buffer zone along Gaza’s land border.
Given these developments – all part of the opening phase – dismissing the momentous changes in Gaza is to deny reality. There have already been disputes over the return of the bodies of Israeli hostages, but there are unresolved longer-term problems that could derail the ceasefire and imperil the rest of the Trump plan.
Rajan Menon is a professor emeritus of international relations at the City College of New York and a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies
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