I worked on a Gaza peace plan with Blair last year. Let’s see if Trump can make it work

From the return of hostages to relief in Gaza; from the release of Palestinian prisoners and the full revelation of the devastation on the ground as the full picture of what Israeli forces have wrought comes into focus, we will gain a clearer understanding of the events of the past two years.

But turning this first phase of ceasefire and hostage release into lasting peace in Gaza will be a monumental diplomatic challenge.

It isn’t easy to say this – given all the chaos and damage done by the Trump administration in nine short months – but President Trump has done the right thing by pressuring Israel to agree to end the war on terms far short of the aims of total destruction of Hamas that the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has articulated over and over again.

Israel achieved its main objectives of killing the leaders who launched the 7 October attacks and destroying Hamas as a military organisation more than a year ago. Had Trump put the same pressure on Netanyahu in January, the war could have ended then. What changed is that the Netanyahu government, in an act of supreme hubris, attacked a Hamas leadership compound in Doha, Qatar in the hope of securing additional war trophies, and instead infuriated Gulf Arab leaders and alienated the White House enough to do what many have long hoped: tell Netanyahu that enough is enough.

What has also changed is that the American administration finally decided to take advantage of the plan developed by former secretary of state Antony Blinken in the summer of 2024 and to enlist the help of former prime minister Tony Blair to implement peace. I can say that Blinken and Blair developed the main outlines of a long-term peace for Gaza and passed that plan on to the administration (I worked with the two Tonys on the plan for the last six months of the Biden administration). It’s only this September that the Trump administration decided to take advantage of the Blinken/Blair plan.

Like the Blinken plan, Trump’s plan doesn’t give each party all that it wants but what it really needs. The Israelis need a guarantee that Hamas can never again threaten Israel with another 7 October. The Palestinians need the departure of Israel from the Gaza strip so that they can get the food, medicine and shelter they need, without facing Israeli attacks on their cities, and to begin to run their own lives. And the Arab leaders need the war in Gaza to be over so that they can get on with the business of modernising their economies and bringing peace and prosperity to a region that has seen little but chaos, instability and war for far too long.

An international force is envisioned to replace the Israeli military in Gaza and prevent Hamas from re-arming. A new governing council is envisaged that will exclude Hamas from government and give a strong voice to the Palestinian authority in its makeup and implementation. And the Arab leaders will finally be able to turn their attention away from the horrors that have been inflicted on the people of Gaza following Hamas’s attack and slaughter of Israelis two years ago on 7 October.

But even if this first phase of hostage release and ceasefire works, there are major hurdles to overcome. First, an international force needs to be recruited that can bring in law, order and basic security. That work has only just begun, and I can tell you from discussions a year ago that getting actual commitments will be extremely difficult. Negotiating with Israel its rights to intervene if it is threatened will require enormous diplomatic skill.

Second, while Trump and Blair have been named as leaders of a council to administer Gaza, a real governance structure has yet to be formulated. Those subtle governance questions bedevilled diplomats in the Middle East and Washington for months when Secretary Blinken launched his effort in the summer of 2024.

Third, will Hamas really disarm as envisioned in the Trump plan? That seems extremely unlikely. Much will depend on whether an Arab and international force can deploy in record time and whether a new Palestinian security force can be quickly trained in Jordan and Egypt. Right now, support for Hamas in Gaza is at an all-time low. With the population in Gaza demanding an end to the war and Hamas rule, now is the time to neuter Hamas as a political force. But it will require an alternative security environment to replace it right away.

The best way to kill Hamas is to kill its ideology. That can only be done if real progress can be made towards the creation of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side. Hamas ideology envisions just one state, run by Palestinians. And that is where the biggest hurdle of them all lies: will Israeli leaders finally do what the founders of Israel dreamed of by making peace with all of its neighbours? The Trump peace plan picks up on the work of the Biden administration to propose a path to a Palestinian state and thus open up the possibility of peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The details of normalisation between Israel and Saudi Arabia were laid out in a series of agreements negotiated by the Biden team and waiting to be finalised. But that will only happen when Saudi Arabia is persuaded that the pathway to a Palestinian state is real – something that is hard to see this Israeli government enabling. But perhaps if the Gaza peace can hold, then in next year’s elections Israel can show what a wise democracy it is by voting in a government committed to a real peace with the Palestinians and Saudi Arabia. That is a big if.

In the meantime, there will be multiple diplomatic problems to resolve just to turn this ceasefire into a workable peace.

Whether President Trump, Netanyahu and Arab leaders have the right stuff to meet that challenge is still an open question. If Trump really wants a Nobel prize and peace in the Middle East, he would be wise to create a direct line with Blair to empower him to cut through the endless wrangling over diplomatic details.

While I know Blair’s role is controversial for many in the region and in his home country, I can say without reservation that he is the right man for the right job at the right time. And having overseen the Good Friday accords for Northern Ireland, he knows how to take advantage of the fact that the Palestinians and Israelis may just have had enough. That popular sentiment has to be transformed into one of the most complex peace operations the world has ever seen. With real help from the Gulf Arabs, who have the necessary resources, and constant pressure from Washington, maybe – just maybe – Blair, if empowered by Trump, can help the Palestinian and Israeli people achieve what President Clinton once called the “quiet miracle of a normal life”.

James P Rubin served as a top adviser to secretaries of state Antony Blinken and Madeleine Albright. He is the co-host with Christiane Amanpour of the Ex Files podcast

Photograph by Khames Alrefi/Anadolu/Getty Images