IT IS TWO MONTHS since the Gaza peace plan was announced (29 September). A few days later, Hamas gave its conditional acceptance of the deal (3 October). On 8 October, the negotiators agreed a ceasefire, which was formally approved by the Israeli cabinet the next day. Implementation started on Friday 10 October.

This post is my third on the peace plan. As in the first and second, my aim is to assess it as a plan. I am not asking whether it was right or wrong, fair or unfair, but would it work? So, seven weeks in and one month after my last assessment, how is it doing?

Outline of the plan & UNSCR 2803

THE PLAN IS STRAIGHTFORWARD. It is 1100 words long and has 20 points, the first two of which state the overall aim while the main focus of the next six is on

• the ceasefire,
• the exchange of the hostages held by Hamas for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, and
• the delivery of humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza.

Clause 9 is about establishing a new authority in Gaza and clauses 10 to 20 lay out the longer-term approach on peacebuilding and development.

The UN Security Council endorsed the plan in Resolution 2803 on 17 November. It takes a few of its 760 words to praise the peace plan and smartly includes a flattering “historic” in “welcoming the historic Trump Declaration for Enduring Peace and Prosperity of 13 October 2025″. Apart from repeating points from the plan, which is appended to the resolution, it puts in a bit more detail on the proposed Board of Peace (BoP) and on security within Gaza. Overall, however, it adds little to the initial peace plan and clarifies none of the uncertainties in it.

Who will be on the BoP, or in the technocratic committee that will answer to the Board, and who will provide the personnel in the envisaged International Stabilization Force (ISF), or what its precise mandate will be – all is left as uncertain as it was before the diplomats got to work. And like the initial plan, the resolution waves in the direction of “a credible pathway” to Palestinian self-determination and statehood after the Palestinian Authority has been reformed but makes no commitment.

UNSCR 2803 has been described as ‘one of the oddest UN resolutions in history‘, which seems to be about right.

Long term

DIVERSE COMMENTATORS AND OBSERVERS agree that the deepest problems for securing peace in Gaza are long-term. I share that view. The conflict is not going to go away without justice and fairness. The one-sided view of justice advanced by Israeli hard-liners and even by relatively moderate voices in Israel and among their international supporters does not offer a way towards peace. Economic development that provides Palestinians with a reasonable degree of prosperity and access to the world, both in Gaza and on the West Bank, is both a herculean task and not enough to provide peace. For that, there is no substitute for justice and fairness about land and political rights.

These problems run so deep that no peace plan, agreement or treaty, however well crafted, could lay to rest all doubts about the durability of a settlement. Even if the initial plan, the Security Council resolution or further negotiations produce more clarity about long-term investment and development, there will always be room for doubt. When development must begin by clearing 60 million tonnes of rubble and the capital need is estimated between 53 and 70 billion US dollars, doubts about the prospects are unavoidable.

The BoP and the technocratic committee to run Gaza on a daily basis have not been set up yet so we should withhold judgement. Flaws in the peace plan can be ironed out in time but building peace is always tricky and slow, and this process does not seem to have a practical clarity about where it is heading.

Medium term

IN THE MEDIUM TERM, things also look difficult. The establishment of the ISF is proving to be a major stumbling block. The peace plan offers no clarity about what it will actually do and what its relationship with Israeli forces will be. Not surprisingly, potential force providers in the region are holding back. They may be turning their back on the whole ISF enterprise, or they may simply want more detail and certainty before committing.

All the while, not only does the situation on the ground get worse both for Palestinians and for peace prospects, but also some variations on the peace plan are starting to take shape. There are signs that Israel and the USA are planning on a long-term division of Gaza into two zones. The dividing line between them would be roughly the line behind which Israeli forces were to withdraw in the first phase of implementing the Trump peace plan.

Discussions and proto-plans are reported by more than one media outlet. There would be a green zone where some tens of thousands of Palestinians may be allowed to live in an area under Israel’s control; it would act as a buffer zone or cordon sanitaire. And there would be a red zone where the majority of Palestinians live and where there is little if any serious reconstruction – some rehabilitation at best.

This generates a further problem for the ISF as it would risk becoming the force that polices the line between the red and green zones, effectively helping hold the majority of Palestinians in subjection.

Short term

WHAT WE HAVE SEEN since 10 October is that the short-term problems can prevent the process from ever getting to the medium let alone the long term.

On the three main issues covered in the plan’s first ten clauses (the short term part) – ceasefire, hostages, humanitarian aid – only the return of hostages and their exchange for Palestinian prisoners can be considered as even being almost successful. The bodies of 26 hostages have been returned, two are yet to be. The process is incomplete and has taken seven weeks so far compared to the 72 hours it was supposed to take. Even so, and despite the error of not recognising that Hamas might not be able to locate the remains of all the dead hostages, this aspect of the peace plan has fared better than any other so far.

Humanitarian aid flows have reportedly increased since 10 October but are still inadequate in many respects. Israeli control and restrictions on aid flows have not ended. The situation is all the worse because winter is coming and too many people are without shelter that is suitable for the season.

My first review of the peace plan pointed out that the clause on the volume of humanitarian aid was a mess and nothing has happened to change my view. Details that should have been filled in later to clarify the intention of the humanitarian clause have not been addressed and it is hard to escape the conclusion that, as a result, Israel has been allowed to continue squeezing the population of Gaza.

Of particular concern is that there has been a serious fall in private donations for humanitarian relief in Gaza, with potential donors apparently misled by all the noise about the peace plan into thinking the problem has been solved and people in Gaza don’t need more help.

And this brings us to the biggest flaw and failure in the peace plan: there is no ceasefire. The Gaza Ministry of Health (MoH) reports (per the UN Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs, accessed 30 Nov) that by 25 November, 347 Palestinians had been killed and 889 injured since the ceasefire was declared. Those figures can be regarded as credible because the MoH reporting of the death toll in Gaza has consistently been below the estimates arrived at by outside experts, such as the team writing in the Lancet medical journal and a team from the Max Planck Institutes in Germany.

And as well as Israeli air strikes and ground attacks, Hamas, as I noted in my second review of the peace plan, has been able to keep a force of 7,000 under arms and active in Gaza.

The problem is simple: the peace plan does not put in place or even vaguely mention a system to monitor compliance with the ceasefire, let alone enforce it. While the ISF was described as “the long-term internal security solution”, there was no provision for a short-to-medium term solution. This is the hole in the plan through which come flooding all its other problems. It is not too late to fix but it will take serious and intensive work to do so and it is questionable whether there is the willingness for that in the governments of either Israel or the USA.

In sum

THE MOST SEVERE PROBLEMS lurk in the long-term prospects for peace. However, the flaws in the peace plan for Gaza announced on 28 September 2025 put it in serious danger of failing in the short term. Nothing is inevitable but the risk is clear.

For the medium term, if the process survives these short-term challenges, establishing the ISF to handle security in Gaza has been hindered by the plan’s vagueness about the terms on which to establish it. This seems to have led to interest on the part of Israel and the USA in dividing Gaza into two zones, one under Israeli control with investment in reconstruction, and the other, where the vast majority of the people would be living, without such investment. This would withhold the benefits of peace from most Palestinians and put the ISF in a difficult, vulnerable and potentially invidious position.

And then there’s the Ukraine peace plan

THE USA’S SECRET PREPARATION of a peace plan for Ukraine, drafted with Russian input and without Ukraine’s knowledge or involvement, was reported in a scoop by the news platform Axios on 18 November. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said and then denied that it was actually a Russian peace plan (a pretty credible proposition in view of its terms). A few days later, confirmation came that there was a lot of Russian input (which perhaps explains why some of the wording was bad translationese from Russian). And the American dealmaker who seems to accept Russia’s terms for ending the war, Steve Witkoff, briefed Russian negotiators on how to get on the good side of the US President. The sober judgement of the Economist magazine was that it was “hard to know whether to laugh or panic.” There has been some pretty sharp pushback by European governments and the EU on the most pro-Russian terms in the original draft but talks are continuing and what will happen is a long way from being settled.

Amid all this, one thing in particular caught my eye. It’s the opening line of Fortune magazine’s report on Witkoff’s advice to Russian negotiators about handling Trump. It reads as follows:

“US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff, fresh from the triumph of the Gaza peace deal, held a phone call last month with a senior Kremlin official to suggest they work together on a similar plan for Ukraine”.

Triumph? Something similar?