President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet at Mar-a-Lago on Monday in what could be the biggest moment yet for the stalled Gaza peace plan. The three-phase arrangement came into force in October, when both Israel and Hamas accepted the initial terms and agreed to a ceasefire. In mid-November, the UN Security Council passed a resolution endorsing the plan, which Trump's UN ambassador Mike Waltz called “charting a new course in the Middle East for Israelis and Palestinians.” Palestinian Authority Vice President Hussein al-Sheikh later met with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the US representative in Ramallah and praised the efforts of Trump and the mediating governments in “strengthening the ceasefire, facilitating the flow of humanitarian aid, reconstruction and progress towards peace, security and stability.” However, the plan has been stuck in phase one for weeks, despite White House statements that a move to the next phase is imminent, and the situation in Gaza continues to deteriorate amid what was supposed to be a ceasefire.
Not surprisingly, the peace plan has stalled. Each stage is more difficult to implement than the previous one. The first phase began on October 10 with a ceasefire, prisoner exchange and Israeli withdrawal to the so-called “Yellow Line,” a controlled border that allowed Israel to control more than half of the Gaza Strip. This phase would also include a significant increase in humanitarian aid and allow Palestinians to begin returning to certain areas. It also conditions the restoration of Palestinian institutions that meet security criteria and views the demilitarization of Hamas and other armed groups as a precondition for any horizon of Palestinian self-government. The second phase involves the disarmament of Hamas, the further withdrawal of Israeli troops and the deployment of the International Stabilization Force (ISF), made up of foreign troops tasked with enforcing the zonal map and maintaining stability. The third phase will complete the withdrawal of Israeli troops and establish long-term governance arrangements within the Peace Council, a new institution chaired by the United States that includes Israel, Egypt and key allied states.
But the plan is not limited to the sequence of troop withdrawals and the definition of stages. It fixes the zonal map created by the war, dividing Gaza into zones of unequal access and control (for example, determining where Palestinians can live and rebuild). Hamas, which initially accepted the text of the ceasefire agreement, now denounces the structure as an attempt to turn the emergency pause into a permanent security order. The group refuses to disarm and rejects any international force operating in Gaza to pursue demilitarization, arguing that such measures would benefit Israel and violate its right to armed resistance. Meanwhile, Israeli officials stressed the need to maintain buffer zones and positions along the Gaza Strip. They insist on maintaining so-called “operational freedom” to carry out raids when they deem it necessary.
The Palestinians, who were largely excluded from the drafting process, are brought into the structure only after their institutions – essentially a modified Palestinian Authority – meet criteria set by the Peace Council, such as transparency, capacity and good governance. Authorities have not held national elections since 2006, when the vote resulted in a Hamas victory; he continues to rule parts of the West Bank through security coordination with Israel and a patronage system that has left him widely distrusted, especially in the Gaza Strip. But a technocratic PA that meets Washington's criteria is not the same as an elected PA that meets Palestinian demands. The peace plan sees reform as a replacement for a political process in which Palestinians themselves have a say.
In Gaza, people are still trying to make sense of a new map introduced in the first phase of the plan, which divides their home into three color-coded zones. The Green Zone is a strip of territory that covers most of Gaza's eastern perimeter and includes other areas captured through months of Israeli ground operations. This is the only part of the sector where reconstruction is allowed in the early stages. The plan calls for foreign contractors to build critical infrastructure there and conduct humanitarian operations there under the close supervision of the IAF and the Israeli army, which retains a functional veto over what to rebuild, as well as where and when.
The Red Zone includes areas that together make up about half of Gaza's territory. There, little or no reconstruction is planned until security requirements such as verified disarmament, stable patrol lines, and cleared supply routes are met. This area includes most of Gaza's most densely populated areas. Given the political impasse and Hamas' refusal to disarm, there is no realistic path to meeting these conditions anytime soon, meaning the restoration of the Red Zone has stalled indefinitely. The plan treats this destruction as a given and codes population displacement as an acceptable and even rational outcome of the war.
