Trump says Israel and Hamas have agreed to 1st phase of ceasefire deal

Trump says Israel and Hamas have agreed to 1st phase of ceasefire deal, but many pitfalls remain.

President Trump announced on TruthSocial that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators had signed off on the first phase of his ceasefire proposal. Trump said this agreement means that “ALL of the Hostages will be released very soon, and Israel will withdraw their Troops to an agreed upon line” at positions within Gaza.

This first phase is just one point of Trump’s 20-point peace plan. Qatari mediators said that further details about the agreement will be announced at a later date.

Both Hamas leaders and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have expressed misgivings about some of the other points of the agreement. The agreement calls for Hamas to totally disarm, which the group has vowed never to do. The plan also calls for Israel to fully withdraw its troops from Gaza, which Netanyahu has already said he’s not going to do. The ultimate, but ill-defined, goal of the plan is to establish a Palestinian state, which Netanyahu has repeatedly said Israel will never accept.

Even though the agreement having been signed hours ago, Israel’s military has continued its attacks in Gaza in the early hours of Thursday morning. The military is also preventing Palestinians displaced in the south of Gaza to return to their homes in the north.

Despite the myriad potential pitfalls, Trump proclaimed today’s agreement to be “the first steps toward a Strong, Durable, and Everlasting Peace”.

“ALL of the Hostages” may not be coming home, and that could be a problem

Due to two years of carnage and destruction wrought by Israel in the Gaza Strip, the remains of some of deceased hostages may be unrecoverable, at least in the short term. In some cases, this is because the hostages are buried in the rubble of the buildings they were in when Israel bombed them (along with the bodies of over 10,000 Palestinians).

In other cases, Hamas may simply not know the whereabouts of the hostages’ remains. In addition to damaging or destroying nearly 80% of Gaza’s buildings (by bombing, explosive demolition, or bulldozing), Israel’s military has also heavily bulldozed the ground to make fortified positions and corridors through the territory. Israel has also heavily damaged or destroyed at least 16 of Gaza’s cemeteries. This may make it impossible to find where hostages’ remains have been interred, even if their burial spot was once known and recorded.

According to Israeli sources who spoke to CNN, Netanyahu and his government have known for months that Hamas will be unable to find or recover the remains of many deceased hostages. The sources implied the Israeli side may use this information to accuse Hamas of having breached the agreement. They may either cite this as a justification to maintain their military presence in Gaza (perhaps even resume their military operations), or use it as leverage to thwart further progress in the peace plan.