The Only Point That Matters Is the First

By Noah Rothman

Tuesday, September 30, 2025

This post is in response to Trump’s 21-Point Plan Misses the Only Point That Matters

By Andrew C. McCarthy

 

As is so often the case, Andy is right. This time, he’s right about the nature of the threat that Hamas poses not just to Israel but the Western world, and the ill-advisedness of efforts to establish a durable peace in the region that disregard that terrorist outfit’s fundamental nature.

 

In his latest, Andy proposes a variety of causes for skepticism toward Donald Trump’s 21-point proposal aimed at drawing Israel’s post-10/7 wars to a successful conclusion. He is duly critical of the president’s apparent belief that there is always a deal to be made, even with intractable and duplicitous parties like Hamas. McCarthy is correct to observe that the plan calls for Hamas to completely reconceptualize itself, give up the hostages, and surrender its governmental and military roles on the Strip, all of which are unlikely. He’s justified in wondering why Hamas would do that, given the goodies the Europeans have bestowed on Palestinian terrorist actors merely for refusing to surrender to Israel, and he has every reason to look askance at a deal that seems to ignore Hamas’s raison d’être: the violent destruction of Israel.

 

Indeed, there’s a lot more in Trump’s proposal that will raise incredulous eyebrows. At some point in the distant future, the plan calls for Gaza to be governed by an international military authority to police the strip while a Trump-led “Board of Peace” manages the transition to a “technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee” run by “qualified Palestinians and international experts.”

 

It’s the sort of plan that can only exist in theory. It is destined to burst into flames the instant it makes contact with the realities on the ground in Gaza. But that proposition, among many others, is probably aspirational. As we have seen so many times before, peace and cease-fire proposals with Hamas’s remnants in Gaza almost never get far beyond the first phase of implementation. And as first phases go, Trump’s proposal has merits.

 

And that step is quite simply: Hamas surrenders all the hostages, living or dead, within 72 hours of mutual acceptance of the deal’s terms. The proposal calls on Israel to match Hamas’s gesture with a lopsided one of their own — the release of 1,700 Gaza detainees and 250 terrorists serving life sentences for attacks on Israelis. It’s a bitter pill, but one Israel has swallowed before. Likewise, the provision that extends “amnesty” to Hamas fighters who either abandon militarism or submit to exile will be fraught.

 

But the terms of this deal do not reward Hamas with anything — not a state that it can govern, not the future promise of legitimacy, not the continuance of its exhortative relationship with the United Nations. The terms are this: Surrender now or destruction later.

 

That’s important, but more important are the number of regional partners who lent their imprimatur to this accord. In a joint statement, the foreign ministers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates endorsed the U.S.-backed plan that would, one day, restart the two-state deconfliction process with the Palestinian Authority in control of both Gaza and the West Bank. In the process, these governments have also tacitly endorsed the Trump plan’s call for the Palestinian Authority to complete its “reform program,” which is a prerequisite to reassuming authority over the strip.

 

Sure, these Middle Eastern governments probably wouldn’t mind it if the United States assumed greater authority over and responsibility for that maladministered headache on the Mediterranean coast. And, for his part, Trump might not see all the obstacles before him on his quest to reimagine Gaza as an internationally financed beach resort. But if we have the luxury of envisioning steps eleven through 16, we’ve already achieved some historic outcomes — foremost of which would be Hamas’s permanent eviction from the Strip.

 

And then, there’s the failsafe. If Hamas balks, stalls, or fails to energetically implement the deal’s terms, “the plan is for the deal to proceed in the areas of Gaza under Israeli control,” the Wall Street Journal’s editors ascertained. “This means Arab states would build the government to replace Hamas’s authority in Gaza even as Israel continues fighting. For Hamas, it could be the worst of both worlds.”

 

It could be. At the very least, the framework makes the Arab world stakeholders in that part of their region. Even if the fighting continues, the proposal establishes that the alternative to Israeli occupation of the Strip and the displacement of its people is an Arab-led enterprise supported and directed by a U.S. and U.K.-backed strategic initiative. That would be preferable to the pre-10/7 status quo. And even if such an outcome isn’t in the offing today or even a year from now, the predicate for such a future has been established.

 

Andy is right: There is no deal to be made with Hamas. But Hamas isn’t being dealt with so much as presented with terms — perhaps favorable terms, when looked at from a certain light, but not terms that provide it with anything that could be plausibly spun as a victory.