A Guide to the Gaza Peace Deal

Days into its second phase, the Israel-Hamas peace plan continues to be tested. 

Last week, Israel struck a Gaza hospital and killed nineteen Palestinians, justifying its fire by claiming Hamas had attacked its forces in northern Gaza. Hamas called the attack a violation of the ceasefire.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry estimates that the death toll in Gaza now tops 71,000 Palestinians—not including many more missing residents presumed dead under the acres-worth of rubble. The Israel Defense Forces, Israel’s military, disputes this figure.

The peace plan shifted to its second phase only recently, after Israel confirmed on January 23 that Hamas had returned the remains of the last hostage from its October 7, 2023, attacks—fulfilling the terms of the first stage. Meanwhile, over in Washington, U.S. President Donald Trump extended invitations to world leaders to join a so-called Board of Peace with full authority to govern postwar Gaza. And on February 2, the day before the Israeli strikes, Israel reopened the Rafah corridor that had, until then, long been closed off.  

The peace plan, a twenty-point document drafted by the Trump administration, was initially set in motion with a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas on October 9, 2025. Hamas’s return of the living and deceased Israeli hostages taken during the 2023 attack that ignited the war was both one of the core stipulations in the plan’s first phase and one of the biggest points of tension in the agreement’s early implementation. Hamas missed deadlines to deliver the hostages, and even handed over fraudulent remains. Despite accusations by the Israeli government and condemnation from the Red Cross, the intermediary for handovers, Hamas denied doing so intentionally. 

The same day the last of the remains were handed over, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Israel would reopen the Rafah crossing, a major corridor between Gaza and Egypt, and the only way in and out of Gaza for most Palestinians. Aid agencies said the opening would help funnel in support to the dilapidated enclave as it endures a harsh winter, and it could allow many more displaced Palestinians to return home for the first time since the war started.

The next steps are still murky. The second phase of the peace plan sketches out ambitious long-term goals, including standing up a stabilization force and transitional government to oversee Gaza. In November, the UN Security Council approved a U.S.-drafted resolution on these details, giving the United States a legal mandate and international support for those parts of its twenty-point plan. 

Trump has begun to offer invitations to several world leaders to join the Board of Peace. He signed the board into action on January 22. At least nineteen board members from around the world attended—though several longtime U.S. allies were notably absent, including Canada and France.

Getting Israel and Hamas to agree and cooperate on next steps could prove difficult. Netanyahu has said that the next phase should not focus on rebuilding Gaza, but “disarming Hamas and the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip.” Hamas, meanwhile, reaffirmed its “commitment to all the terms of the agreement” after returning the last hostage, but called on mediators to ensure Israel would “stop its violations of the agreement.” Two days later, however, a senior Hamas official clarified that the group has “never” agreed to lay down its weapons, but that there was some room to discuss “which” weapons could be removed. 

Israel and Hamas have each accused the other of violating the ceasefire since the initial October truce. The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry claimed that Israel had killed more than four hundred Palestinians by December 24, and the United Nations has reported that the country has rejected more than one hundred aid requests that are largely from NGOs working in the enclave. 

Israel has also accused Hamas of violating the ceasefire multiple times. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) accused the group of attacking and killing its soldiers in numerous separate instances and of crossing the withdrawal line it has held since the start of the ceasefire.   

Both sides have also said they remain committed to peace despite the alleged violations, though both hold positions that are not in line with the blueprint being supported by the international community. Israel is staunchly against Hamas having a future role in Gaza, while Hamas has repeatedly been resistant to disarmament and to relinquish governance. 

Here’s what the twenty-point peace plan entails..

What did Israel and Hamas initially agree to?

In the first phase of the peace plan, the two sides agreed to a set of parameters that were to go into immediate effect. However, the implementation has been a mixed success. Two prior ceasefires—one in November 2023 and another in March 2025—failed before this one took effect. 

A ceasefire. Israel and Hamas agreed to halt fighting. This initial ceasefire went into effect on October 10 after Israel’s cabinet formally approved the agreement. Trump’s peace plan sketches this out as “all military operations, including aerial and artillery bombardment, will be suspended, and battle lines will remain frozen.” Israel’s military action in Gaza had reportedly intensified until right up to the ceasefire deadline. 

Since the truce, many Palestinians returned to Gaza City after an Israeli military spokesperson declared it safe. Hamas reportedly began mobilizing thousands of security forces to reassert control over areas of Gaza recently vacated by Israeli troops and faced accusations of attacking and killing Israeli soldiers. Israel reportedly adopted a hardline approach to guarding the withdrawal line at the direction of Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz after two IDF soldiers were killed in Rafah on October 19. There have now been multiple reports of Israel’s military striking “near or east” of the withdrawal line that have led to casualties, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. 

A military drawdown. In the first phase of the ceasefire, the IDF agreed to withdraw their troops up to a so-called yellow line that leaves it in control of 53 percent of the enclave, with very few Gazans living in that zone. The White House released a map of the Gaza Strip that showed the first of three stages of Israel’s withdrawal.

Future stages indicated withdrawals to around 40 percent and 15 percent of Gaza’s territory. The final stage keeps a security perimeter around the enclave until it is “secure” from any “resurgent terror threat.” Some reports using satellite imagery show that the blocks laid out to demarcate the line have actually been moving deeper into the enclave, rather than further back. (The IDF has rejected this claim.) 

A hostage and prisoner release. Hamas agreed to return the last hostages it had taken in October 2023 within seventy-two hours of the IDF withdrawal. In exchange, Israel agreed to release 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences, 1,700 other Gazan detainees, and the bodies of 15 Palestinians for each deceased hostage it received. Several high-profile political figures at the top of Hamas’s release list were not included in the swap. 

The twenty living hostages were released back to Israel on an October 13 deadline, and the remains of twenty-five hostages were also returned. Hamas missed the deadline to return the last of the deceased hostages, which had been a point of contention for Israel, despite the Red Cross, which has dedicated additional staff and resources to recovering bodies from war-ravaged areas, saying that the process could take time. The Israeli military also accused Hamas of falsifying some remains, which the Red Cross condemned. By January 26, however, Israel confirmed that all hostages and hostage remains have been returned to Israel. 

Troop deployment. In October, Israel stationed troops at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, where aid trucks were entering again after months of aid being constricted at the shuttered corridor. The United States also sent two hundred troops to Israel to monitor the ceasefire and help with aid delivery as well as next steps in governance and security inside Gaza. No U.S. troops will be deployed directly inside Gaza, officials have said. The European Union has said that it was ready to deploy a long-standing humanitarian mission at the Rafah crossing “as soon as conditions allow.” 

During Vice President JD Vance’s late October visit to Israel, the United States unveiled a Civil-Military Coordination Center, where the two hundred troops operate. The center monitors the ceasefire and facilitates “the flow of humanitarian, logistical, and security assistance” by international partners into Gaza, the U.S. military said in a statement. 

Aid delivery increases. The plan said that “full aid” would be sent to Gaza “without interference,” which Trump later specified means six hundred trucks carrying aid per day. This was to include, per the UN Security Council resolution, “rehabilitation of infrastructure (water, electricity, sewage), rehabilitation of hospitals and bakeries, and entry of necessary equipment to remove rubble and open roads.” Israel opened the Zikim border crossing for aid flow into northern Gaza in November, a channel that had been closed for months. The Rafah crossing, too, had been closed since May 2024, but opened again on February 2.

Aid groups have expressed hope that Rafah’s opening means that Israel will allow more aid in, warning that the enclave has faced a growing humanitarian crisis as the conflict has continued. The UN-backed global hunger monitor has previously said there is an “entirely man-made” famine in Gaza and emphasized the need for the resurgence of aid, with more than three-quarters of the population still struggling with acute food insecurity. Despite increases in support after the October ceasefire, “we have been struggling with food insecurity and improper access to medication—and still we are,” Tahani Samra, a doctor stationed in Gaza for the nonprofit Project Hope, told CFR. “If [Gazans] are not struggling with malnutrition itself, they are struggling with malnutrition complications.” 

Israel claims that Hamas has undermined aid efforts and has forcefully denied the famine determination, which it said is based on Hamas data and a manipulated process. 

What happens next?

Even with the UN resolution passed and an international framework agreed upon, the next phases of the plan present even thornier challenges. 

“The first stage of this peace plan is the easy part,” CFR Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern studies Elliott Abrams told CFR. “As world attention turns away when the fighting stops, these intractable issues will be no less difficult to solve than they have in the past decades.”

Among the first challenges the plan faces is the Board of Peace’s effectiveness to set the framework and monitor funding for Gaza’s redevelopment. Trump has said he will lead the board, and it will “include the most powerful and respected Leaders throughout the World.” The board was originally designed to just govern Gaza until 2027, when the Palestinian Authority (PA) would take over, but Trump has since broadened its mandate to more general global conflict resolution, with an initial focus on Gaza. 

Figures onboard so far include Argentinian President Javier Milei and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Other board members include Netanyahu, U.S. officials such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, as well as World Bank President Ajay Banga, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Several countries were notably absent from the invite list or rejected the invitation, including Canada, France, Germany, and Spain. Trump has also asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to join; Putin has yet to accept but is “studying all the details of this proposal,” according to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.

The peace plan does not guarantee the establishment of a Palestinian state, a longtime goal of the PA, the Palestine Liberation Organization, numerous UN Security Council resolutions, and the policy position of several U.S. administrations. In the days leading up to the UN Security Council vote in November, at the insistence of Arab and Islamic states, the plan’s language was changed to mention the possibility of statehood, but only if the PA reformed itself adequately.

Though Israel said it supported the UN resolution, Netanyahu has previously resisted having the PA play a role in governing Gaza. 

“There is no appetite for a two-state solution among Israelis who have concluded after October 7 that Palestinians do not want to live side-by-side in peace with them,” CFR Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa studies Steven Cook said. Indeed, the latest local polling shows that a growing majority of Israeli Jewish and Arab respondents oppose a two-state solution. At the same time, a majority of Israelis—66 percent, up thirteen points from last year—believe it is time for the war to end. 

To that end, the United States will work to help form an International Stabilization Force (ISF) “to establish security, preserve peace, and establish a durable terror-free environment,” the White House said in a January 16 press release. In that same declaration, it named Major General Jasper Jeffers III as the ISF’s leader. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz said that Azerbaijan and Indonesia have agreed to contribute soldiers and that several more countries are expected to send troops now that the UN resolution has passed. 

The plan stipulates that the ISF will deploy immediately with the goal of training and supporting newly formed Palestinian security forces meant to police parts of Gaza, but the mandates and missions of both forces remain unclear, including on the issue of who will conduct disarmament efforts. One of the biggest challenges for the ISF, once it is convened and deployed, will be how to confront Hamas fighters, who are still active in Gaza and reject the plan’s provision that requires them to disarm and give up any future leadership role in the enclave.  

The resolution’s governance plans instead are to transition to “temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee,” which will operate under the Board of Peace. The White House has confirmed that Palestinian official Ali Sha’ath will lead the committee. The PA, the governing body of the West Bank, will simultaneously undergo a reform program to prepare for governance of the Gaza Strip. 

Meanwhile, an independent monitor group is intended to oversee the demilitarization of Gaza. All “military, terror, and offensive infrastructure” would be destroyed—a condition that Hamas has refused, but that Israel has said is a basic condition for peace. “There will be no future in Gaza as long as Hamas possesses weapons,” the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations said the day the UN resolution was approved. But the details on this group are lacking. 

A panel of experts will also convene and produce an economic development plan to “rebuild and energize Gaza.” The plan is to establish a special economic zone with preferred tariff and access rates (to be negotiated with participating countries). It does not address the costs or funding sources needed to rebuild Gaza after the conflict, which the World Bank estimated last year would cost more than $70 billion.

Austin Steinhart, Will Merrow, and Christina Bouri created the graphics for this article.