TEL AVIV — A deadline now governs a war that has defied clocks for nearly two years. With hours left until Sunday at 6 p.m. Washington time, Israel’s military signaled that it was preparing for the first phase of a White House plan and Hamas indicated conditional acceptance of parts of President Donald Trump’s 20 point proposal to end the fighting in Gaza. The core promise is stark and simple on paper. A ceasefire that holds long enough to bring home every Israeli hostage still alive, repatriate remains, and open a conduit for relief, followed by a sequence of withdrawals, exchanges, and supervision that could change how Gaza is governed.
Nothing about this is simple in practice. The public statements that followed the rollout split across familiar lines. Israel welcomed the framework but kept forces in place. Hamas said it would accept elements of the proposal, including the release of all Israeli hostages, while rejecting other parts and seeking further consultations among Palestinian factions. The plan’s technical heart is a ladder. It starts with a verified halt to fire, then a first tranche of hostage releases and prisoner exchanges, then measures to stabilize daily life, and only then a debate over longer term security arrangements and who, if anyone, polices Gaza once the guns go quiet.
Trump added a timer to that ladder. In messages amplified worldwide, he instructed Israel to stop bombing to facilitate exchanges and set a public ultimatum that expires on Sunday evening. The White House presented this as a final chance for a clean break from a conflict that has pushed civilians past endurance. Mediators described frantic hours of drafting and clarifying with Cairo and Doha as they tried to squeeze an agreement into the narrow space that still exists between maximalist positions and battlefield realities.
The plan’s first phase, as described by US officials and echoed in Israeli statements, centers on verifiable steps that are legible to families who have spent months waiting by their phones. Hostage lists. Routes. Medical checks. Confirmations that reach across borders. In that window, Gaza would see a surge of humanitarian deliveries through corridors that organizations say have been inconsistent and risky. The goal is to compress the chaos into a schedule that can withstand political pressure. If the handoffs succeed, later phases would move to deeper questions that war has only sharpened. Who secures the crossings. Who pays for repairs. Which actors are barred from carrying weapons. What happens to the tunnel grid that shaped much of the combat.
Israel, for its part, said the army is preparing for the first phase of implementation while staying ready to act if the clock runs out. After months of urban fighting, the shift is more about posture than geography. Defense officials spoke of a defensive configuration that still keeps units forward. Inside the political system, the plan collided with the currents that have shaped the war’s conduct since the first weeks. Security professionals who prize verification and incremental steps. Ministers to the right of the prime minister who distrust any process that includes concessions. Families of hostages who have become a moral center of gravity and want action.
The United States placed itself at the center of the timetable. The administration collected endorsements from partners and framed the deal as a test of seriousness for all sides. The promise goes beyond quiet. It includes a reconstruction track with outside oversight, and an effort to expand economic links that would lower the temperature around Gaza rather than trap it in cycles of siege and reprisal. Supporters describe it as the quickest way to alter incentives. Critics call it compressed and precarious, a design that tries to outrun spoilers without fully addressing structural causes that spoilers exploit. For a contrast between podium confidence and ground reality, see our file on podium promises meeting street level fragility.
Diplomats involved in the shuttle work point to the same pinch points in every round. Sequencing of releases and withdrawals. The level of inspection at crossings, and the presence of monitors trusted by both sides. The role of Egypt and Qatar in securing guarantees from Hamas, and the role of Washington in keeping Israel inside the lines of a schedule that it did not originate. The political optics are difficult in every capital. In Israel, the idea of pausing fire at the instruction of an American president invites attacks from rivals who argue that pressure should flow only one way. In Gaza, the idea of handing any part of security to outside actors invites its own backlash, especially if residents see foreign supervision as a mask for indefinite control. For readers tracking the maritime dimension, our explainer on boarding procedures at sea and inspection playbooks outlines how verification works at checkpoints beyond land crossings.
What makes this weekend different is the combination of leverage and fatigue. The war has taught each side what it cannot easily change by force. Hamas can mount attacks and deny Israel total control of Gaza’s interior, but it has not consolidated governance or protected civilians from the cost of bombardment. Israel can destroy infrastructure and kill militant leaders, but it has not brought all the hostages home or persuaded the world that the scale of destruction serves long term security. The window opened because both sides want something they have not been able to get. For Israel, that is the safe return of captives and a route out of open ended urban war. For Hamas, that is survival of cadres and a political role in whatever comes next.
The first seventy two hours of any deal would be a stress test. In one scenario favored by planners, the ceasefire would begin at a precise hour. Monitors would confirm that fire has stopped across agreed lines. Health workers would move into prearranged corridors under protection. The first hostages would cross through set points. Palestinian prisoners would walk out of Israeli facilities according to an exchange ratio that negotiators have argued over for months. Even if the first steps succeed, later moves would be harder. The controversy over disarmament is not academic. It is the fulcrum. If Hamas retains arms, Israel says, then any pause is only the prelude to another round. If Israel insists on complete disarmament as a prerequisite, Hamas says, there will be no deal.
That is why the plan leans on verification more than trust. The documents describe layers of checks using technology, foreign observers, and phased incentives. Gaza’s crossings would remain under scrutiny. Environmental health and power distribution would be measured, because they are easy for outside agencies to track. The promise of funds would be unlocked in stages when benchmarks are met. The hope is that practical progress will create its own politics, and that life returning to some normal routines will pull armed actors away from confrontation. A recent humanitarian snapshot catalogs the metrics that matter on the ground. Our own coverage has followed the same trail of numbers, from ambulance trip times to clinic outages and school reopenings.
There are known risks. Jihadist holdouts or small factions could try to break the truce with rockets or ambushes. Any incident involving a hostage transfer would have outsized impact on public opinion. Israeli forces operating under strict rules to keep the ceasefire intact could find themselves absorbing provocations that would have drawn immediate response two weeks earlier. The regional echo is just as delicate. Lebanon’s frontier has remained volatile, and Syria’s airspace is a perennial arena for signaling. Gulf capitals that have lined up behind the plan will watch for early proof that this is more than public relations. Europe, juggling its own crises, has little appetite for another failed process. The United States has staked presidential credibility on a schedule that voters can understand. Every actor has reasons to claim success quickly, or to establish blame if the timer runs out.
The question of who governs Gaza after guns go quiet is the deepest hole in the ground. The plan nods to an interim arrangement and a period of trusteeship, but the words are placeholders until someone puts badges on people and assigns budgets. The Palestinian Authority is both the most obvious and the most contested candidate to assume administrative work, even if only in part. A technocratic council is the other evergreen solution. Both require consent that is hard to find. On the Israeli side, any arrangement that allows Hamas to retain political influence will be attacked as victory for a group that launched the war with mass murder. On the Palestinian side, any arrangement that looks like occupation by other means will be attacked as surrender. The negotiators have tried to short circuit the debate by making the immediate goal narrow. Save lives. Trade captives. Build enough confidence to survive the first week.
The families closest to the pain have been here before. Hostage relatives in Israel, who have marched and spoken through months of delay, greeted the weekend with hope and dread. The prospect of reunions has a way of focusing debates that grew abstract. In Gaza, families displaced several times over talk about quiet the way people talk about air. Their questions are specific. When will bakeries receive flour. Will generators receive enough diesel to keep the oxygen plant running. Which roads will open and for how long. Humanitarian organizations have already noted suspended activities inside parts of Gaza City because diesel and access are not guaranteed. Our reporting has tracked oxygen plants failing and generators coughing when deliveries stall.
Deadlines can clarify, but they can also harden pride. The fixed hour is meant to force choices that leaders have delayed. It could do that. It could also turn a fragile consensus into a referendum on submission. The difference will be in the details of implementation and the choreography of public language. Israel will want language about security that does not look like capitulation to outside pressure. Hamas will want language about dignity and national rights. The mediators will try to craft sentences that both sides can read aloud to very different audiences. If the words are wrong, the ladder will wobble before anyone climbs it.
It is worth remembering that deals that once felt impossible in this conflict have been reached in moments of exhaustion. Temporary truces that delivered small groups of captives. Limited pauses that allowed aid into neighborhoods where the need was most visible. The mechanics of those operations are the seed for this larger effort. The difference now is that the stakes have been scaled up. Every success will be a signal to proceed. Every failure will be evidence against patience. The war’s political economy has its own inertia. Arms shipments and defense postures and diplomatic rituals continue even during lulls. The plan asks those systems to pause and, in some cases, reverse.
By late Sunday, the clock will either stop or reset. If it stops because Hamas accepts conditions that Israel can live with, the first hostages could come home within days and aid could flood into a place that has gone without. If it resets because the timer passes in silence or ends with new strikes, the negotiators will not throw away their binders. They will salvage what they can and return to the narrow channels that have already produced small trades of people for pauses. The difference will be in the costs that accumulate. Every day that passes without a comprehensive arrangement deepens loss that cannot be repaid. For context on maritime choke points that have shaped aid flows, see our report on how the coastal aid route kept shutting even as ceasefire talk grew.
The plan’s advocates argue that this is not about recasting history or deciding every question of sovereignty in one weekend. It is about preventing a predictable spiral as winter approaches and military gains turn to stalemate. A ceasefire that holds long enough to change lives can change politics. The criticism is also clear. Ceasefires freeze injustices, they say, and outside administrators cannot fix what decades of occupation and armed resistance have produced. The truth that negotiators work with is less lyrical. People need quiet to breathe. Politics needs quiet to work. Even a flawed arrangement that stops gunfire and opens crossings would create space for better arguments. For the human stakes measured at checkpoints, our coverage of hostage families who turned grief into a moral center of gravity shows how pressure builds under a deadline.
That is where this weekend sits. Between urgency and doubt. Between a president’s schedule and a war’s stubborn code. The phones of diplomats will keep lighting up with versions of the same question. What is your side prepared to give on sequencing, inspections, and the words that will appear in the first joint statement. The answer will decide whether families wake to messages that change their lives, or to another week of waiting for a plan that always seems a day away.
