President Donald Trump’s potentially historic peace deal between Israel and Hamas, which aims to finally release all the remaining hostages taken on October 7, 2023, faces several significant hurdles even as the administration remains positive it can close the deal.
“No one said this is going to be easy. This is good progress, but a lot of work remains, but it is the most significant development in this entire situation in a long time, and it’s the closest we’ve been in a long time to seeing a path towards the release of every hostage,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during an appearance on ABC News’ This Week on Sunday.
Newsweek reached out to the White House for comment by email outside of normal business hours on Sunday morning.
Why It Matters
During Hamas’ October 7th attack, 1,200 Israelis were killed, and 251 others were taken hostage, while over 65,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s offensive.
Last week, Trump said Hamas appeared ready to agree to a peace deal, with the priority of the administration to finally secure the release of all 48 remaining hostages still being held in Gaza. The president had unveiled the plan earlier in the week and gave a warning that “all HELL” would fall on Hamas if the Palestinian militant group rejected the deal.
The deal would see Hamas release the hostages, of which only 20 are believed to still be alive, and would agree to give up power and disarm. In return, Israel would stop its offensive and withdraw from much of the territory, release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, and allow humanitarian aid and eventual reconstruction into the region.
Plans to relocate much of Gaza’s population to other countries also would be taken off the table for now.
Trump remains keen to secure this deal as one of his major promises made on the campaign trail and since taking office.
What To Know
Rubio revealed on Sunday that “technical talks” about finer details of the deal are ongoing, and the administration hopes that its team of negotiators will arrive in Cairo with “90 percent” of the deal finalized.
“We’re just sort of finalizing the logistical piece,” the secretary of state said. “We’d like to see it done yesterday. I mean, we want to see the hostages moving as quickly as possible.”
However, he laid out some of the key points that remain in contention, including the potential of continuing combat that would jeopardize the deal.
“You cannot have an exchange if there’s active combat ongoing,” Rubio told This Week host Martha Raddatz. “You just can’t do it…for the safety of the hostages and for the Red Cross, or whoever it is that’s going to go in there and be part of this exchange. You have to set the conditions.”
He added that Israel would continue to deal with “imminent threats,” and that a significant concern about “opportunities here for whoever wants to sabotage” the deal – including Hamas and “elements linked to Hamas by…creating conditions that are not viable for an exchange.”
The logistics remain the overriding concern about the deal, with Rubio making clear those details have to be worked out and remain up for discussion at this time.
“We saw that previously in the other hostage release where the Red Cross would go in, they would take custody of these people, they would bring them back out. All of that has to be worked out, and I think at this point is when I would say we want to get technical about this.”
The other great concern remains whether Hamas will fully commit to laying down arms, which is the key to the second phase of the deal.
“As long as there’s a threat emanating from Gaza against Israel’s security, be it Hamas or some successor organization, as long as they are people, organizations inside of Gaza who possess rockets, build tunnels, want to kidnap, murder and rape Israeli citizens and attack Israel, there isn’t going to peace,” Rubio said.
He outlined a vision of Gaza run by “Palestinian technocrats and Palestinian civil servants and Palestinian leaders that do not pose a threat to Israel,” but admitted this would likely prove “to be a tough piece of it, no doubt.”
A Military Perspective
Former North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis also addressed the deal during his interview on This Week, saying he had “a cautious sense of optimism” about the deal, but noted that signs of a peace deal have materialized and vanished several times over the past year, comparing it to “Lucy with the football” from the Peanuts comic strip.
However, he said he had in mind three points that had to be observed for him to believe the peace deal would work: “Lawyers, guns, and money,” he said, in reference to the song by Warren Zevon.
“What’s the governance going to be?” he said, later adding, that the U.S. had to “get the guns out of the hands of Hamas,” and then asked, “Who’s going to pay for it?”
“Those are the three things I’m really watching, but yeah, I’m very cautiously optimistic at this point,” Stavridis said.
He also highlighted the tunnel complex under Gaza as the one key point he believes has been overlooked in talks so far, arguing the complex must be decommissioned in order to remove the “appetite for war.”
He also suggested that an Arab peacekeeping force would best serve to maintain the deal, touching on a point of contention that has played out in the background of any potential deal over the past month, with China and Turkey at times suggested as alternative powers to maintain a peacekeeper presence in the region.
What Happens Next?
A team including U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner will travel to Cairo on Sunday to finalize the deal and the lingering technical details of the hostage release, the New York Post reported.
