After two years of war and stop-start pauses, the administration of President Donald Trump in late September 2025 recirculated a 21-point postwar plan for Gaza aimed at pairing a rapid ceasefire and hostage-prisoner exchanges with the first verified Israel Defense Forces (IDF) pullback and an international stabilization force.
Similar missions—such as the Multinational Force and Observers in Sinai and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon—operate under defined mandates and rules of engagement.
The proposal lands in a political landscape split between armed-group leverage and institutional legitimacy claims.
The Plan, at a Glance
- Rapid ceasefire tied to reciprocal steps
- Release of all remaining hostages alongside Palestinian prisoner releases
- Phased IDF pullback
- Deployment of an international stabilization force
- Explicit ban on any future Hamas role in governance; dismantling offensive infrastructure (including tunnels)
- Transition to Palestinian Authority (PA)–led self-rule contingent on reforms and security benchmarks
Implementation would proceed in phases tied to verified milestones.
Israeli Red Lines and Coalition Pushback
As of Sept. 28, 2025, Israel has not formally accepted or rejected the US 21-point “day-after” proposal for Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel is “working on” the plan with Washington and that “nothing has been finalized.” In his Sept. 26 UN General Assembly address, he added that “Gaza would be demilitarized, Israel would retain overriding security control,” with a civilian authority “established by Gazans and others committed to peace,” and he rejected externally imposed statehood, declaring, “Israel will not allow you to shove a terror state down our throats.”
Israel will not allow you to shove a terror state down our throats
Jerusalem has also restated that control of the Gaza–Egypt border, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, is nonnegotiable, calling it essential for interdicting weapons and money flows from Sinai into Gaza and for preventing the reactivation of tunnels and overland smuggling routes. Public messaging has kept a distance from restoring the Palestinian Authority “as is” in Gaza, even as officials float a “peaceful civilian authority” not run by Hamas or the PA. Netanyahu has further signaled conditional openness to safe passage or exile for Hamas figures if all hostages are released and the war ends.
Diplomacy remains tense following Israel’s Sept. 9 strike in Doha targeting Hamas leaders. Netanyahu’s office said “Israel takes full responsibility,” and the operation complicated Qatar’s mediation role.
Inside the coalition, hard-liners Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir have warned against any pathway to Palestinian statehood or a PA return—pressure that narrows room for compromise.
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Israel did not enter this war to hand Gaza on a silver platter to another terrorist entity
Against that backdrop, Yitzhak Kroizer of the far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party voiced categorical opposition. He told The Media Line that while his faction respects Washington and President Trump, “Israel did not enter this war to hand Gaza on a silver platter to another terrorist entity. We went into this campaign to destroy the terror organizations, bring back the hostages, and make sure Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israeli citizens.”
Kroizer also rejected any handover to the Palestinian Authority, calling it “a terrorist organization in every sense” and adding: “The PA today is the largest funder of terror against the Jewish people. Those sitting in our prisons receive salaries according to how many Jews they killed. To end two years of painful fighting only to give Gaza back to them is something we cannot accept.”
He further argued that voters did not authorize such a deal: “Most citizens who voted for Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu are not prepared for a Palestinian state, nor to transfer Gaza to PA control. The mandate he received was to eliminate terror groups, return the hostages, and re-establish Jewish sovereignty and settlement in Gaza, because only sovereignty and settlement bring real security.”
Hamas’ Calculus
Daniele Garofalo, an independent expert on armed jihadist groups, told The Media Line that the document cannot be read as a “Hamas-only” bargain. He cautions that Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other factions are part of the equation: “Hamas is certainly leading the negotiations, but I would not forget the important and central role of Palestinian Islamic Jihad as well.” Because the plan “in some points … refers to the West Bank—and in many areas there, Hamas is not present,” he warns that this could “trigger dynamics of internal conflict” where non-Hamas brigades operate.
Hostage sequencing is the first friction point. “Hamas does not want to release the hostages all at once because it believes this is its best weapon to continue to survive and to have a voice in the negotiations”—a stance he calls “the most serious strategic mistake of these two years of conflict,” yet one that shows why an all-at-once release is a pivotal test for the group.
Second is governance exclusion and disarmament. He flags the clause that “‘Hamas will have no role in the governance of Gaza’” and the pledge to “destroy and halt the construction of any offensive military infrastructure, including tunnels.” The problem, he argues, is that the infrastructure targeted by the plan was “also used by … the al-Quds Brigades in particular,” meaning enforcement cannot be a Hamas-only exercise without instant asymmetry. Beyond infrastructure, the hinge is survival: “Hamas and its military wing would have to disband and cease to exist.” Accepting that, he says, would leave it with “no longer any say over anything—troop withdrawals, demilitarized zones, future government”; rejecting it would be read internally as “a lack of interest in the Palestinian people … only an interest in maintaining power.”
In what way will the areas be managed and handed over by the IDF? Who are these international forces to whom they will be handed over?
A third obstacle is vagueness—the kind that invites resistance on the ground. Demands for “the total demilitarization of Gaza” and a population “de-radicalize” track are “not well-specified,” he notes, and likely to meet “resistance from all the military factions.” Even the fallback clause allowing rollouts in “terror-free areas” raises basic questions that, he says, remain unanswered: “In what way will the areas be managed and handed over by the IDF? Who are these international forces to whom they will be handed over?” The document does not specify who would designate “terror-free areas,” the criteria that would apply, or the duration.
PA’s Red Lines
Nidal Foqaha, CEO of the Palestinian Peace Coalition and the Geneva Initiative, approaches the same text from the standpoint of legitimacy and state-building. “The Palestinian Authority will not accept less than acting as the sole legitimate authority in the Gaza Strip,” he told The Media Line. Even if security control is “phased or backed by Arab or international partners,” Ramallah will “insist on ultimate authority over policing and civil institutions to prevent parallel structures,” which he calls the only path to intra-Palestinian unity, which “we … lacked over the last two decades.”
The Palestinian Authority will not accept less than acting as the sole legitimate authority in the Gaza Strip
That logic extends to the interim. The PA, Foqaha says, “insists on a civil administration committee that is headed by a Palestinian cabinet minister” and may accept international backing “in security and reconstruction,” but rejects arrangements that insert “externally approved individuals or technocrats … creating parallel authority under the PA’s name but not its control,” leaving it “responsibility without real power.” The principle is distilled in a message often repeated by PA President Mahmoud Abbas: “one authority, one security, and one weapon”—no armed groups outside official PA forces.
Those red lines are explicit: Israel “keeping military control or bases on the ground in Gaza,” exclusion of the PA from governance or security, or any international trusteeship that “replaces rather than supports” PA presence would be unacceptable. So too would the continued withholding of tax-clearance revenues—“Israel is halting, in part and in whole, tax transfers to the PA for almost the last two years”—and any permanent blockade that chokes movement and reconstruction. On politics, he argues the end state cannot be left to euphemisms: the text must “explicitly affirm … an independent, sovereign, and contiguous Palestinian state on the 1967 borders—land swaps—with East Jerusalem as its capital”; “vague references to ‘political horizons’ or ‘negotiated capital’ will be unacceptable,” and the language must be “clear, binding, and anchored in … international law and relevant UN resolutions.”
On elections and day-to-day viability, he calls for “guaranteed uninterrupted tax-revenue transfers,” “more flexibility and freedom” at the Jordan crossing amid “recent Israeli restrictions,” and a dated path to the ballot box: “announce elections in two years from ending the war … with a binding, time-bound roadmap” covering the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, backed by international guarantees that voting can proceed in the city per the Oslo Accords. Security support is acceptable—up to a point: The PA could “accept an international or Arab multinational force in Gaza with clearly limited mandate … mainly to support stabilization … but not replacing it,” and only “transitional … up to five years.” He is clear on scope: on prisoner exchanges, “the PA has no role … and I don’t expect the PA to have a role in the near future.”
The plan rises or falls on two parallel tests. For Hamas and other armed groups, credibility will rest on sequencing (hostages, prisoners, verifiable IDF drawdowns) and on whether exclusion from governance is paired with real, specified security and amnesty mechanisms—areas Garofalo calls vague and politically defining. If those anchors are nailed down, a stabilization force can function as a bridge rather than a holding pattern. Without them, partial rollouts in “terror-free areas” risk reproducing the very fragmentation the plan is meant to fix.
Gabriel Colodro contributed to this report.