After a year of what UN experts described as a genocide against Palestinians, there is a deal on the table to end the violence. United States President Donald Trump announced his Gaza peace plan on Sept. 29 in conjunction with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A few days later, Hamas declared its intentions to return all remaining Israeli hostages under Trump’s terms, in exchange for the return of Palestinian detainees.
The plan begins by asserting an immediate end to hostilities and, upon agreement of both parties, will enact a freezing of battle lines and a pause on aerial bombardment, as well as a provision that adequate aid be given to Palestinian civilians. According to the document, as soon as all Israeli hostages are released, Israel will free 250 prisoners serving life sentences and some 1,700 detainees. For each Israeli hostage whose remains are returned, Israel will return the remains of 15 Palestinians.
The peace plan calls for the disarmament of Hamas and provides amnesty to members who agree to peaceful coexistence. It also establishes a provisional government containing international and Palestinian experts, headed by President Trump. Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair is among the heads of state on the list to participate in the oversight board.
In addition to calling for an end to violence, Trump’s plan focuses heavily on the development of Gaza’s economic capabilities. It prioritizes the reconstruction of the destroyed cities using explicitly economic language. According to the text released by the White House, future Palestinian governance should be “conducive to attracting investment.” It states that “many thoughtful investment proposals and exciting development ideas have been crafted by well-meaning international groups” and proposes the creation of a special economic zone with preferential tariffs for “participating countries.” However, it is not clear which countries this includes.
The ceasefire is already being called into question as Israel continues its attacks on Palestinians. The plan requires Israel to reopen the Rafah border crossing to allow aid into a region where man-made famine conditions have existed for months, but Netanyahu has yet to uphold this promise. Israel stated that the border would remain closed until Hamas returned more hostages, but the Palestinian group, which has already returned the remains of half of the hostages, said that the destruction of Gaza has made the process of transporting the remains to Israel more difficult.
PBS reported that Hamas freed the 20 living hostages last week, and Israel released approximately 2,000 Palestinian detainees in return. Israel has returned the bodies of 135 Palestinians as part of the deal, but they are returned with no names, only numbers. A report from the Guardian claims that the majority of the corpses are difficult to identify and bear marks of torture. Many had been blindfolded and executed, and beaten both before and after they were killed.
Both Hamas and the Israeli government have accused the other of violence; Israel fired on a bus in Gaza City for crossing a yellow line they had been warned not to cross, killing a family of eleven. The youngest of the seven children killed was five years old. The next day, Palestinian militants killed two Israeli soldiers, and the IDF responded by killing 44 Palestinians. Al-Jazeera stated that Israel has violated the agreement 80 times since Oct. 10, 2025, killing nearly 100 Palestinians in the process.