Trump and Netanyahu agree new peace plan for Gaza: a Global News Podcast Special

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This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Andrew Peach and at 21 Hours GMT on Monday the 29th of September.

This is a special edition with the news that President Trump and the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have agreed a peace plan for Gaza.

I hope that we're going to have a deal for peace.

I have a feeling that we're going to have a positive answer.

If Hamas rejects your plan, Mr.

President, then Israel will finish the job.

This can be done the easy way, or it can be done done the hard way.

Hamas says it's studying the proposal, which provides for an immediate end to the fighting, a partial Israeli withdrawal, and the release of Israeli hostages.

In this special podcast, we'll hear more from the two leaders and bring you analysis and reaction to what they had to say after their talks at the White House.

President Trump says Israel has agreed to a peace deal for Gaza following talks in Washington with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Hamas says it's studying the proposals but hadn't seen them before they were announced.

Mr.

Trump's plan sets out terms for both sides to stop the fighting.

Israeli troops will partially withdraw, and hostages held by Hamas will be released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

Following that, aid will return to levels last seen at the beginning of this year.

Speaking in the Oval Office, President Trump outlined the key points of the deal.

If accepted by Hamas, this proposal calls for the release of all remaining hostages immediately, but in no case more than 72 hours.

So the hostages are coming back, and the bodies of almost all cases, the young men, are coming back immediately.

And it means the immediate end to the war itself.

Under the plan, Arab and Muslim countries have committed to demilitarize Gaza, and that's quickly.

Decommission the military capabilities of Hamas and all other terror organizations.

And we're relying on the countries that I named and others to deal with Hamas.

And I'm hearing that Hamas wants to get this done too.

Standing alongside Benjamin Netanyahu, also known as Bibi, President Trump said if the proposal was not accepted, the U.S.

would back Israel's response.

I hope that we're going to have a deal for peace.

And

if Hamas rejects the deal, which is always possible, they're the only one left.

Everyone else has accepted it.

But I have a feeling that we're going to have a positive answer.

But if not, as you know, Bibi, you'd have our full backing to do what you would have to do.

Everyone understands that the ultimate result must be the elimination of any danger posed in the region.

and that danger is caused by Hamas.

The tyranny of terror has to end, and this is again

something that we're looking for.

This is eternity.

This is for

forever.

Israel's prime minister said after two years of war in Gaza, Hamas faced a clear choice.

If Hamas rejects your plan, Mr.

President, or if they supposedly accept it and then basically do everything to counter it, then Israel will finish the job.

by itself.

This can be done the easy way, or it can be done the hard way, but it will be done.

We prefer the easy way, but it has to be done.

All these goals must be achieved because we didn't fight this horrible fight, sacrificed the finest of our young men to have Hamas stay in Gaza and threaten us again and again and again with these horrific massacres.

Mr.

Netanyahu said he didn't trust Gaza to be left in the hands of the Palestinian Authority, which administers some parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

and he said Israel would never accept a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

That would be an outcome that, after October 7th, would reward terrorism,

undermine security, and endanger Israel's very existence.

As for the Palestinian Authority, I appreciate your firm position that the PA could have no role whatsoever in Gaza without undergoing a radical and genuine transformation.

It won't come as a surprise to you that the vast majority of Israelis have no faith that the PA leopard will change its spots.

But rather than wait for this miraculous transformation, your plan provides a practical and realistic path forward for Gaza in the coming years, in which Gaza will be administered neither by Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority, but by those committed to a genuine peace with Israel.

To bring you some reaction, the French President Emmanuel Macron has hailed Mr.

Trump's commitment to ending the conflict.

Italy says it's ready to play its part in enforcing the proposal.

The Islamic Jihad Group has said the announcement holds the recipe to blow up the Middle East.

Our Middle East analyst, Sebastian Usher, is with me.

Sebastian, listening to the two men in the White House, has Israel's position shifted significantly?

I mean, you're already saying, has the Prime Minister Benjamin Etanyahu's position shifted?

Because he's really the man who has been leading Israel's strategy throughout, often against very voluble protests by a large number of people in Israel.

I mean, I think that you probably can say that this meets most of what he

wants from an end to the conflict.

I mean, there are two obstacles in a way that have been big stumbling blocks from his perspective before.

One was about accepting a ceasefire that would not allow Israel, if he felt it necessary, to continue fighting in Gaza against Hamas and other factions when that ceasefire came to an end.

Now, he said himself when he was on the podium with President Trump that that condition had essentially, with the others that had been set, had been met by this because

this does seem in some sense to go against what he's been wanting up until now, saying that the 72 hours, if this happens according to this mechanism, in which all the hostages would be released, would also mean an immediate end to the war.

But at the same time, Hamas would have had to accept within the conditions of this plan their surrender.

Hamas's total surrender, essentially, its demilitarization, handing over all its arms, all its other arms being destroyed, and that its members would either essentially be de-radicalized and could perhaps stay in Gaza, or if they accepted that they would no longer bear arms and would no longer stage any militant actions, any terrorist actions, then they could be given amnesty and go into exile, and that they would play no role whatsoever in any future of Gaza or Palestine as a whole.

So that is essentially surrender from the perspective of Hamas.

Now you could say, but the way that the conflict has gone does give Israel very much militarily the upper hand.

There's no doubt that Hamas is a shadow of what it was.

So it's down, in a sense, to its leaders, I think, inside Gaza, who are still fighting, whether they want to continue with what would, in a sense, perhaps be a last stand, but will continue to have a very, very heavy cost for Palestinian civilians if they did so, rather than surrender on paper now.

We don't know where that's going.

I think they'll be playing for time as we've had before with Hamas essentially giving a kind of guarded positive but with conditions that they feel still need to be met in this.

As you heard there, as we heard, essentially both Mr.

Trump and Mr.

Netanyahu, as they have before, said that if Hamas doesn't accept this, then President Trump will stand fully behind Mr.

Netanyahu, whatever action he then takes.

And Mr.

Netanyahu said there's an easy way and there's a hard way to do this.

So I think this brings the Palestinians to an extent inside Gaza, as civilians.

It brings them into play.

to an extent.

Do they still believe that what Hamas is doing has any real positive end result that could be achieved, in in which case the lives that many of them could still lose, if this isn't signed up to, would have some meaning, or had they reached a stage where they think that's no longer the case and that Hamas, along with Israel, which is of course continuing with its offensive, particularly in Gaza City, have to be held responsible for any continuing loss of civilian life.

This is a big quandary for Hamas.

Sebastian, thank you.

So, what does this mean for the remaining hostages held by Hamas that are believed to be alive in Gaza?

My colleague Paul Henley has been getting reaction from Yehuda Cohen, the father of 20-year-old Nimrod Cohen, an Israeli soldier who was captured on the 7th of October.

Well, it's a progress, but we are kind of in a limbo.

Kind of out of hell, but let's see if we'll go into heaven.

Meaning, first thing, if Hamas will accept it.

Second thing, if Netanyahu could pull it through with his current government, which is very right extreme, racist government.

But you spoke to NewsHour last week when you were talking about Netanyahu's speech to the UN General Assembly in New York, and you were absolutely pessimistic about a deal.

Things have turned around.

Well, as I said then, first of all, must admit, in his speech and his interview after that with Fox News, everything was no, no, no, no, no.

As I said then,

Netanyahu needs to be forced on a deal.

And we know that

between those smiles and those hugging,

Trump actually forced this deal on Netanyahu.

Remember that he forced Netanyahu to apologize to the Prime Minister of Qatar.

Trump is kind of forcing Netanyahu this deal while he's hugging him.

So Netanyahu needs to pull it through his government.

His government is very extreme, very right extreme.

I heard that uh parliament member knesset member gans is uh again willing to help

the main problem is uh seeing that hamas will accept it and we know that it was with agreement with qatar with turkey with uh with egypt we need to to

hear a final answer from hamas we need to see when is it going to start these 72 hours when those 72 hours going to start and that's crucial to you isn't it because if Hamas does not accept everything about this plan immediately, your son is in mortal danger.

Exactly.

This is the thing.

And again, it's new.

It's just now.

As you heard the press conference by Trump and Netanyahu, I heard the same thing.

And let's see what will be the next step, which is

Hamas' answer.

Time will tell.

Yehuda Cohen, father of Nimrod, an Israeli soldier taken by Hamas, speaking from Washington.

So will Hamas agree to the proposals laid out in the White House?

That's unlikely, according to our Gaza correspondent, Rushdie Abu Alouf, who's been in touch with members of Hamas.

Well, officially, they have just received the proposal from the Qataris and the Egyptian, and they promised to study it.

That's what they have told both the mediators.

Earlier today, I spoke to Hamas figure in Doha, and he was like, you know, very unlikely that Hamas would accept something that they have rejected many times before.

And he said all of the previous offers was like much better than this one.

And he was talking about three main issues for Hamas, saying that we would not accept any agreement that not guarantee ending the war and withdrawing all of Israeli forces from Gaza.

And most important is that Hamas will not give up their weapon unless there is a Palestinian state created.

But we have managed to speak to one of the like field commanders in Al-Qassam Brigades in Gaza a couple of days ago.

And he said that they have received a message from the overall now commander called Nizidin al-Haddad.

He's in charge of Hamas military and everything in Gaza, who told them that we are preparing for the last battle.

He said that they are preparing 5,000 militants.

They called up from all around the Gaza Strip, including 2,000 people who are from the elite unit and they prepare 500 suicide bombers, as he said.

Well, we couldn't verify verify this when i did ask the hamas official in doha about it he didn't comment for it but it seems that what's going on in gaza is completely different from the political you know talks in in doha and in gaza he seems to be preparing for a final battle that could put not only the lives of palestinians in gaza at risk but also the israeli hostages who are still held by hamas where hamas said many times that israel would not get them by force only through negotiation And that's our Gaza correspondent, Rushdie Abu Alouf, who's in Istanbul.

And that's it from this special edition of the Global News podcast.

There's more online at bbc.com/slash news.

And our regular edition with all of today's global stories will be available to download later.

This edition was mixed by Daniel Fox.

The producer was Stephanie Tillotson.

The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Andrew Peach.

Thanks for listening.

And until next time, goodbye.

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