I have covered a lifetime of grand announcements, but this one is simple. Bring them all home in three days, then we can argue about everything else. That is why this imperfect deal remains an excellent one for Israel.
If the Jewish state says yes and Hamas follows, the guns go quiet, the lines freeze, and every hostage, living and fallen, comes home within 72 hours of Israel’s official acceptance.
One decisive exchange is better for Israel’s security than months of paper pauses that Hamas will game and then break. US President Donald Trump has added the leverage that makes the timing credible.
“If Hamas rejects the deal… they are the only ones left,” he said at the White House before turning to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a sentence that echoed the one that originated from Jerusalem, addressed at Tehran: “Bibi, you have our full backing to do what you have to do.”
For a public that measures policy by funerals avoided, this is not poetry. This is a guarantee.
The second reason to take the deal is that it unlocks what it unlocks the minute the warfare stops. Trump wrapped Gaza into a broader package about Iran, trade, and “the expansion of the Abraham Accords,” and he did it with characteristic flourish.
Eternal peace in the Middle East?
“A big, big day, a beautiful day,” he said, even “eternal peace in the Middle East.” Grandiose, yes. But beneath the rhetoric sits something real. If this sequence holds, a path opens to normalization with Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and other Arab and Muslim countries that have the power to change Israel’s strategic map.
This could translate to air routes, investment, research ties, and a larger coalition that shares an interest in containing Iran’s network. That is the difference between a cold quiet and a region that finally wants to do business with Israel. Or as Theodor Herzl put it in the postscript to Altneuland: “Dream and deed are not as different as many think.” The dream is peace and regional partnership; the deed is buses at the border, monitors on the ground, and rules that hold.
The plan’s backbone is its sequencing. Israel accepts it publicly. Within 72 hours, all hostages, living and deceased, are returned. Only then does Israel release prisoners, including those serving life sentences and those detained since Hamas’s October 7 massacre.
For the fallen, there is a remains-for-remains ratio that no family should ever have to contemplate. There are no euphemisms that make this easy, but the order of operations matters because it reduces the risk of a collapse halfway through.
An international 'Board of Peace'
What comes on the “day after” is the high wire. Gaza would enter a transition overseen by a new international “board of peace,” chaired by Trump, with leaders such as former UK prime minister Tony Blair participating in this initiative.
A technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee would run services on the ground. Arab and Muslim states, in Trump’s telling, would help demilitarize Gaza, dismantle tunnels and production sites, train local police, and support a phased IDF withdrawal once conditions are met.
Trump also spoke to the families in the most human way. He described meeting parents who want the bodies of their children home, even when those children were murdered in captivity. It sounded jarring in a televised statement, but any Israeli who has sat in those living rooms knows the truth of it. We all recognize the names, faces, empty chairs at the Shabbat tables, and a country that has lived two years of tension and agony.
At home, there will be a political reckoning, which has already begun. Members of the coalition wanted sovereignty declarations. They wanted ceremonies and maps. Today, they feel let down.
Netanyahu will say that American and international pressure made a sovereignty move impossible and that the hostage imperative came first. That is accurate. It is also true that he used this moment to avoid a sovereignty fight he did not want now.
The honest answer is that sovereignty in Judea and Samaria is not merely a rhetorical term. It can be advanced by changing realities on the ground, not by chasing recognition that may not arrive for years. Zoning and infrastructure, legal clarity for communities, security coordination that protects families, and the quiet, cumulative steps that last after cameras leave are how sovereignty is made real.
For Palestinians, the choice is stark. The framework envisions a Gaza that is deradicalized and terror-free. Hamas members who accept peaceful coexistence and decommission their weapons will be offered amnesty. Those who choose to leave will receive safe passage to third countries.
Some fighters will take the amnesty. The movement’s leadership may not. Trump says Arab and Muslim countries will deal with Hamas and help erect local policing. If they truly can, it will be new. If they cannot, this will be a press conference, not a transition.
The humanitarian and economic track for Gazans is the part that Israelis can picture because it has worked in short bursts. Aid would surge immediately, with priorities for power, water, sewage, hospitals, bakeries, rubble removal, and roads. Rafah would reopen under an existing mechanism. Add to that a special economic zone and a broader investment plan, and Gaza might finally have a way to replace the economy of smuggling and missiles with one of jobs and services.
The Achilles’ heel is always diversion. Cement and cash must build homes, not tunnels. That requires auditors, monitors, and a policing model that keeps aid in hand, not in silos. Or in the words of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, “Therefore, the pure righteous do not complain of the dark, but increase the light. They do not complain of evil, but increase justice.” The task is not to lament what is broken; it is to rebuild what will last.
None of this is perfect. No plan is. However, perfection is not the choice before Israel. The choice is between a fast, enforceable sequence that ends the hostage nightmare and another season of temporary ceasefires that Hamas will break.
The choice is between a narrow ceasefire and a negotiated pause that unlocks normalization with Riyadh, Jakarta, and others who can turn quiet into strategy. The choice is between arguing about sovereignty on a podium or exercising it by shaping the reality on the ground on the morning after.
So take the deal. Bring them all home in three days, then argue about everything else. Use the calm to lock in normalization and to set rules in Gaza that last longer than a Middle Eastern news cycle (this isn’t very long).
If Hamas refuses, Israel has the public backing to finish the job. If it accepts, Israel gets its people back and a shot at a safer region that wants to engage, invest, and fly here. That is an amazing deal, even with everything it asks of us to sacrifice.