President Donald Trump told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a phone call on Thursday that he wants Israel to take steps to implement his Gaza peace plan, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter cited by Axios. The roadmap calls for disarming Hamas and demilitarizing Gaza, and for transferring responsibility for governing the enclave to a new Palestinian technocratic government. It has been on hold for months because of the Israeli elections held on October 27: the Trump administration did not want implementation to become a politically explosive issue during the campaign.
Trump endorsed Netanyahu shortly before that election. Now that it is over, the president wants to forge ahead with the plan regardless of whether Netanyahu or his opposition forms the next government, the sources said. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, adviser Jared Kushner and envoy Steve Witkoff also joined the call, which Netanyahu initiated and which a source described as constructive; it also addressed the war in Iran.
The machinery exists but has not moved. Trump’s Board of Peace, established under the Gaza agreement, reached an agreement with Hamas last July on a 15 point plan to disarm the armed groups in Gaza and transfer civilian and security control to the technocratic government, with an International Stabilization Force to follow. In August, Kushner told Netanyahu that Hamas had for the first time agreed to disarm and urged him to test whether the commitment was real. Netanyahu’s government has largely refused to move forward since, mostly for domestic political reasons, Axios reported, and Netanyahu remains extremely skeptical that Hamas will ever demilitarize, saying the group is reconstituting and rearming.
In September the Board of Peace unveiled a six month, $2.45 billion initial recovery plan for Gaza, a 66 project proposal covering the early months of postwar recovery and governance. A US official said the process would be gradual and that reconstruction would begin only after progress in disarming Hamas had been verified, adding: “We want to move forward collaboratively and we need full cooperation and partnership from the Israeli government.”
The demand lands inside Israel’s government formation fight. A day after the call, Tony Blair, a member of the Board of Peace, visited Israel and met both Netanyahu and Gadi Eisenkot, who received the mandate to form a government on Sunday, urging Israeli leaders to give the plan a chance. Whether the government that emerges from Eisenkot’s 28 day mandate, or a Netanyahu led alternative, accepts the plan’s sequencing is now one of the first external tests either will face.