The article below was first published by the Israeli daily Haaretz on September 30, 2025.

It seems to offer an accurate assessment of the plan for Gaza announced by U.S. president Donald Trump on September 29, 2025, at the White House during a visit by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who endorsed the cease-fire proposal.

Hamas has not yet announced officially its stance on the proposed plan.

On October 3 Trump announced a deadline of Sunday, October 5, for Hamas to accept his plan. If not, he warned that “all HELL, like no one has ever seen before, will break out against Hamas.” 

Meanwhile Israel is continuing its U.S.-backed genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza, nearly two years since the grotesque October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel.

The Israeli onslaught has killed more than 68,000 Palestinians — more than 80% of them civilians, and over 30% children. It has injured well over 100,000, has turned most of the territory into rubble, and has caused widespread conditions of famine.

In mid-September, Israel’s Defense Forces (IDF) launched a ground invasion of Gaza City, which is still grinding on, exacerbating the already obscene death toll and mass displacement of Palestinians to southern Gaza.

The Israeli regime has been unmoved by growing international protests.

These include a flotilla of 40 ships from around the globe that unsuccessfully attempted to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza in early October. Mass demonstrations and strikes demanding an end to the Israeli war, and to the complicity of European governments in carrying it out, have spread in Italy and other countries as word of the flotilla has filled news feeds in social media.

The protests also include the recognition of a Palestinian state by a dozen new governments this year — including Australia, Canada, France, Mexico, and the United Kingdom — bringing the total to 153 out of 197, or 81%, of the United Nations (UN) member states to do so. However, these actions have been largely symbolic, since many of the European governments that have recognized Palestine continue to send weapons to Israel and maintain trade and other economic ties with it.

The Israeli regime has also denounced the September 16 release of a new report by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which concluded that “Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” The report urged Israel and all other states “to fulfil their legal obligations under international law to end the genocide and punish those responsible for it.”

We are publishing the article that follows for the information of our readers. The headline, subhead, text, and photos below are from the original.

— World-Outlook editors

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Analysis

Trump’s Cease-fire Plan Gives Hamas a Stark Choice: Accept Surrender or Risk Israeli Occupation

If Hamas rejects Trump’s proposal, Israel has U.S. backing to continue its systematic destruction of Gaza, even at the cost of Israeli hostages’ lives. When all the rhetoric is stripped away, the peace plan offers a choice between ‘soft’ foreign occupation or a violent, uncompromising Israeli one

By Jack Khoury

September 30, 2025

U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposed cease-fire plan for Gaza presents Hamas with its most difficult dilemma since the war began.

On the one hand, agreeing to the plan means surrendering the organization’s last bargaining chip, the Israeli hostages, and relying on Trump, his administration, and the international community to actually deliver on a full Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza and install a multinational administrative body until a replacement Palestinian security force can be established.

All of this comes without clear timelines – if any at all – nor a concrete plan for reconstruction or any sign of a genuine political process.

On the other hand, rejecting the proposal would give Israel, with U.S. backing, a pretext to continue its systematic destruction of what remains of Gaza, even at the cost of Israeli hostages’ lives, until the occupation of Gaza becomes completed, at the price of more thousands killed, wounded, and displaced.

For Hamas – and, in fact, for what is broadly referred to today as “the Palestinian leadership” – accepting the proposal could mean a cease-fire and some humanitarian relief, in exchange for releasing hostages and securing the release of Palestinian prisoners, but without any serious framework for future diplomacy.

Immediately after the Trump–Netanyahu press conference, senior Hamas official Mohammed Mardawi said the plan had not been presented to the organization or to any Palestinian party. Still, he noted that its clauses closely mirror Israel’s perspective.

According to Mardawi, Trump’s proposal seeks to halt growing international momentum and recognition of Palestinian statehood, and the concessions offered in place are superficial and without guaranteed. Instead, it suggests some form of unclear governance propped up by money, technocrats, and continued full Israeli control – indefinitely.

This is not the first time Palestinians have faced such crossroads. In the past, even when governments in Israel and the United States were much less extreme and conservative, the Palestinians were confronted with similar dilemmas, although amid less destruction and bloodshed. Even then, the results were often disappointing.

From the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, through the understandings that followed, up until Israel’s unilateral disengagement in 2005, there is a stark gap between Israel’s commitments and their actual implementation.

Now too, when all the rhetoric is stripped away, Palestinians, both in the West Bank and Gaza, are left with little more than a choice between a “soft” occupation and a violent, uncompromising one.

In practice, what Trump is offering Hamas amounts to this: Hand over the hostages, and we’ll see when and how we give you some kind of political process. Beyond praise for himself and his team, with many lofty words, there is no concrete proposal for a future diplomatic framework for the Palestinians.

The American president may dream of a Nobel Peace Prize, but that is where it ends. For Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, he offers neither vision nor even the start of a genuine political process, nor does he challenge Netanyahu’s outright opposition to Palestinian statehood.

In reality, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority alike are being forced to choose between foreign rule or open-ended occupation, without any clear framework.

Trump, meanwhile, touted Arab leaders’ supposed endorsement of his and Netanyahu’s edicts, ignoring entirely the need to provide the Palestinian leadership even a minimal incentive to pursue reform or positive change.

But when the slogans are peeled back, Israel’s position remains unchanged, and Trump, in a familiar display of narcissism, tries to wrap it in Arab and international approval built on money, not vision.

Now, Hamas must decide which path to take.

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