4 Oct 2025

In a series of events that shocked the world, Hamas not only issued a positive
response to the latest US-Israeli ceasefire proposal, but Donald Trump publicly
announced his intention to implement it and called upon his allies in Tel Aviv
to halt their attack on Gaza.

...

The so-called "peace plan", was not a detailed proposal; instead, it was more of
a roughly put-together collection of political demands and ill-articulated
desires, with no mechanisms to implement it. The only implementable part of the
so-called plan was the release of every Israeli captive and their bodies.

However, the White House seemed to indicate that it demands Hamas immediately
hand over all Israeli captives held in Gaza within 72 hours, after which they
will just have to depend on Israel's goodwill to uphold their side of the
bargain. Considering that Israel decided to violate a much more detailed and
phased ceasefire agreement back in March, going on to mass murder over 12,000
civilians afterwards, the idea that Tel Aviv will respect such an agreement is
outlandish.

This and many other issues with the Trump-Netanyahu proposal evidently meant
that Hamas needs to engage in negotiations to bring about a real deal that is
realistic. Therefore, this is what they asked for.

Then came the big surprise: Donald Trump decided to publish a post on 'Truth
Social' that welcomed the Hamas statement, treating it as an acceptance. He
appeared to indicate that details needed to be sorted out, but urged Israel to
immediately stop bombing Gaza.

In response to this, Israel escalated its bombardment of Gaza City and its Prime
Minister decided to issue his own written response to the developments of the
day. Instead of reacting negatively, as Israeli media had been for hours,
Netanyahu's office indicated that they are preparing for Hamas to hand over all
of the captives in the first stage of the agreement and welcome it.

So here lies the issue. Hamas seeks to engage in dialogue and it appears as if
the US Trump administration was expressing its openness to hashing out the
details of a ceasefire deal. Yet, the Israeli government is speaking as if Hamas
is just going to start releasing all of the captives and will agree to immediate
disarmament. Both cannot be true.

Therefore, this deal will have to go one of two ways: either through
negotiations or Israel demands the immediate release of its captives. The latter
is not a reasonable assumption, as Hamas would lose all of its bargaining chips;
therefore, it will only proceed in the case of negotiations.

Ultimately, the negotiations could either lead to Hamas fully surrendering,
which is unlikely, or the talks will begin to evolve towards shaping a ceasefire
deal that is closer to what was previously proposed and accepted. It appears
however, that the Israelis will attempt to throw a spanner in the works before
the talks reach such stages, then blame Hamas for violating the deal.

As it stands, there is no chance that a ceasefire can be implemented - according
to the current parameters of the Trump-Netanyahu plan - where the Israelis would
actually stop their ethnic cleansing and even the war. If Hamas were to somehow
agree to surrender, it would be a death sentence for the future of Palestinian
life and self-determination in Gaza.
-- Cont'd at https://www.palestinechronicle.com/hamas-trump-israel-and-who-accepted-what-ceasefire-analysis/