The sales pitch from Washington arrives with familiar swagger. It is framed as a comprehensive plan to end a war. It reads like a pressure instrument to protect Israeli freedom of action and to box Palestinians into a narrow corner. In Egypt, where Arab, Turkish and Qatari envoys have done the unglamorous work of keeping channels alive, the American plan is not a breakthrough. It is a test of whether the strongest military backer of one party can referee the terms of a ceasefire it has never truly supported. For now, the answer is no.
The choreography that American officials advertise as balanced is anything but. It is a ladder that asks Palestinians to move first and most, while allowing Israel to keep the initiative at every hinge. Release these people. Stand down these units. Accept these monitors. Then, perhaps, Israel will pause, and perhaps it will pull back from named blocks of shattered neighborhoods. Regional mediators see a trap. A deal that lets Israel reset, regroup and dictate pace, while Palestinians trade leverage for promises that can evaporate with the next air raid. If the goal is to halt killing, open crossings and return people to homes with roofs, the current American plan is an obstacle, not a path.
The lists are leverage
Hamas and Israel have exchanged lists of names for a potential swap. The exchange matters because it surfaces political costs in both societies. For Palestinians, the prisoner ledger cuts across generations. For Israelis, the hostages are a national trauma and a rebuke to leaders who promised security and delivered catastrophe. Washington treats the lists as a countdown calendar. Regional diplomats, especially in Cairo and Doha, treat them as leverage to force guarantees that were missing from every failed attempt so far. The difference is not semantic. It determines whether a pause becomes a real and enforceable ceasefire or yet another intermission before the next round of bombing.
In private, Arab mediators describe a simple hierarchy. First, a full and verified stop to all strikes. Second, an enforceable Israeli withdrawal timetable that is public and dated. Third, an exchange mechanism that is linear and shielded from political theatrics. The American draft scrambles that order. It pairs hostage releases with vague, reversible military steps and it keeps the most consequential act, withdrawal, floating behind conditions that only Israel can certify. That is the blueprint of a coercive bargain, not a peace agreement. It institutionalizes the imbalance that produced this disaster in the first place.
Who verifies whom
Any ceasefire in Gaza lives or dies on verification. Washington proposes monitors without teeth and a joint room where violations are logged. It sounds tidy. It does not answer the central question, which is who tells Israel to stop when it decides to push again. Regional capitals argue for a short, bounded stabilization force that answers to a neutral mechanism, not to Washington or to Israel. Egypt wants a structure that respects its border and its security calculus. Qatar wants a structure that protects hostages and civilians from being used as bargaining chips. Turkey wants a structure that prevents occupation by another name. None of this is radical. It is the minimum required to keep a ceasefire from collapsing under the first provocation.
Withdrawal, the real hinge
Withdrawal is the clause the American draft treats as a fog. It uses language that can be stretched to excuse any delay. It treats named neighborhoods and corridors as bargaining chips rather than obligations. It gives Israel a veto over the calendar by making movement contingent on amorphous concepts like “security conditions” that only the occupying army can define. Regional mediators reject that logic. A ceasefire that does not move soldiers out of urban cores on a public, dated schedule is not a ceasefire. It is an armed lull. It keeps civilians hostage to military calculations they cannot see and cannot influence.
Turkey’s position has been consistent. Without a real pullback, monitored by outside actors that both parties can tolerate, the talks will recycle the last year of failure. Qatar, which has carried the hostage file at high political cost, is aligned on sequencing. First halt, then verifiable withdrawal, then exchange, then a transitional administration that rebuilds basic services. Egypt, which bears the brunt of any collapse at Rafah, insists on a ceasefire that is enforced at the crossing and in the skies. These are not maximalist positions. They are the floor on which an honest agreement can stand.
The American portrait
The American president projects urgency and control. The team around him includes political confidants and business allies who advertise access to the White House and to Israel’s inner sanctum. The message is that Washington can deliver Jerusalem, and that Washington can press Arab capitals to absorb the next costs. The record tells a different story. When pressure is required, Washington bends toward Israel’s preferences. When scrutiny is required, Washington narrows the aperture. The current plan replicates that habit. It centralizes American sign-off at key steps and treats Arab guarantors as accessories rather than co-authors. It is not how durable peace is made in this region.
The attempt to sell this as balance also insults the numbers. Palestinians have endured a relentless campaign that has erased neighborhoods and families. There are mass graves and unmarked plots. There are schools turned into shelters turned into targets. Every humanitarian metric has collapsed. In that context, to ask Palestinians to trust a paper that allows Israel to pause and then restart operations is to ask them to forget the last two years. They will not forget, and they should not be asked to.
Prisoners, hostages and red lines
Every swap tests political nerves. Israel will not release a set of men it has sworn never to free. Hamas will not sign a paper that excludes names it considers nonnegotiable. The American plan pretends to square this by moving the hardest names to later stages and by tying their fates to behavior inside Gaza. That gambit fails on contact with politics. Inside Israel, coalition survival becomes the metric. Inside Gaza, survival is literal. The way to handle the red lines is to remove theatrics. Agree in principle to categories, not to symbolic fights over this leader or that lieutenant. Move the oldest, youngest and sickest first. Then exchange by sentence length, not by political headlines. Arab mediators understand this because they have executed and sustained complex swaps before. Washington understands it as well, but prefers a structure that gives Israel veto moments in every tranche.
The day after, owned by Gaza
The draft language about governance is where the mask slips completely. The American plan paints the day after as a technocratic exercise that can be choreographed from Washington and Jerusalem. It is a recipe for another round of dependency and humiliation. The day after must be owned by Palestinians, with Arab and broader Global South backing on money, materials and security cover. A short transitional period can be staffed by competent technocrats, many of whom already exist, but the mandate must be clear. Rebuild services. Reopen schools. Restore clinics. Prepare a credible timeline for political representation that is not designed to fail. None of it can be done under the threat that a strike can resume at any hour.
There are workable designs on the table that Washington sidelined. An Arab-led stabilization mission with a tight mandate and a fixed sunset. Independent monitoring that reports to a neutral body, not to a partisan camp. A customs and crossings regime that lifts the siege logic and restores economic oxygen. A reconstruction pipeline underwritten by states that are tired of paying to rebuild what American weapons later destroy. These are designs that respect the people who live in Gaza and the neighbors who carry the risk when things collapse. They should be the spine of any agreement. The American draft treats them like accessories.
Why this time could still turn
Despite the flaws, there is a reason mediators have not walked out. The lists are exchanged. The delegations are senior. The international appetite for an enforceable ceasefire is stronger than at any point since the war began. Arab capitals that were once divided now speak with greater coordination. Ankara and Doha keep channels to the political leadership that matters. Cairo controls the geography that matters. If these capitals align on a joint counter-proposal that flips the sequence — halt, withdraw, exchange, stabilize — the table shifts. It forces Washington to either accept a genuinely balanced plan or to admit that it prefers continued war under a new label.
The counter-proposal does not need lofty prose. It needs dates, maps and powers that are not American. Stop all fire at a fixed hour. Pull troops from named urban belts on a public calendar. Start exchanges under Red Cross supervision with regional guarantors at the table. Insert a stabilization mission with authority to interdict violations. Scale aid with protected corridors and real deconfliction, not press releases. Stand up a civilian administration whose mandate is services, not politics. Set a timetable for elections when security and dignity make them plausible. Tie resumed military action to adjudicate, independently verified breaches, not to unilateral claims.
What would break it
There are obvious risks. Any attack at the wrong moment can tip leaders back into well-worn postures. Any cabinet debate in Jerusalem can turn into another bid for survival, at the expense of the paper on the table. Any American statement that hedges on enforcement will be read in Gaza as a green light to resume strikes. There are also subtler risks. A stabilization force without access or authority will be blamed for every failure it cannot prevent. A reconstruction pipeline that routes through the old patronage networks will breed cynicism and black markets. A day-after plan that dodges the question of political dignity will collapse into another cycle of control and resistance.
The human measure
At ground level, none of this is abstract. Families want to bury their dead without fresh fire. Parents want to find their children under living roofs. Traders want crossings that open and stay open. Clinicians want power that does not flicker and medicine that does not run out. This is the measure that matters. A plan that keeps Israeli troops in urban belts under soft language is not a plan for these people. A plan that lets airstrikes restart on Israel’s timetable is not a plan for these people. A plan that places verification with the very power that supplied the bombs is not credible to these people.
There is a way to write an agreement that honors the reality of this war and the dignity of its victims. It requires Washington to step back from the role of final arbiter. It requires Israel to accept that security cannot be manufactured by pulverizing a society and then calling it peace. It requires Arab capitals to take the lead they have already earned, with broader Global South backing that brings money, legitimacy and a pressure lever not tethered to American politics. It requires a verification regime that is independent, with access and consequence. Most of all, it requires a sequence that moves the guns out of people’s lives before it demands anything else from them.
For months, the world has been told that only American pressure can close this file. The record of the last two years, and the text of this plan, say otherwise. Peace in Gaza will not be brokered by a patron that keeps one party supplied and shielded. It will be brokered by neighbors who carry the consequences, by mediators who outlast press cycles, and by a verification system that treats Palestinian lives as equal to Israeli lives in law and in practice. The plan on the table fails that test. The region has the tools to write a better one. It should do so now, while there is still enough hope to build on and enough will to enforce what is signed.
In Sharm el Sheikh, the choice is stark and overdue. A ceasefire that finally puts civilians first, with a withdrawal timetable that means what it says, or another paper designed to collapse on cue. The first option asks Washington to share power and Israel to accept limits. The second asks Palestinians to surrender their last leverage in exchange for a lull. Only one of these options deserves the name peace. The other is a pause shaped by the next war. The region, not Washington, should decide which one survives the week.
