“Today is a historic day for peace,” President Trump said after jointly announcing his 20-point plan for ending the war in Gaza with Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House yesterday. “Let’s call it eternal peace in the Middle East.” Donald Trump likes to swing for the fences.

Optimists say this deal is a game changer. It has the endorsement of much of the Arab world, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia, as well as the EU, Turkey and others—though last-minute changes by Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly rankled some Arab leaders.

It isn’t asking for promises from Hamas—it is demanding that they turn over the remaining hostages and then vacate Gaza. Disarm and deradicalize or be dismantled. Trump has made similar ultimatums to Hamas before and failed to follow through. But those haven’t come with this much fanfare.

So—will Hamas agree? We’ll know by Thursday, Yom Kippur, when Trump’s 72-hour deadline ends. The terms are hard:

1. Give up all hostages and lose all leverage. Surrender and permanently lose military and political power in Gaza. Leave and regroup, probably in the West Bank.
2. Decide no, defy global consensus, and accept all blame for Israel scaling up its war. Hamas is in a corner.

More details of the proposal:

• Israel immediately ceases fire and begins a staged withdrawal even before hostages are released. It frees 250 prisoners serving life sentences, plus 1,700 Gazans detained after October 7—returning a lot of Palestinian murderers to the field.
• After all hostages are returned, a staged process of Gaza’s rehabilitation, demilitarization and political restructuring unfolds.
• The UN (thoroughly infiltrated by Hamas) resumes control of Gaza’s aid.
• Gaza is run by a Board of Peace chaired by Donald Trump and other world leaders, including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. They will oversee a temporary government by “a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee.” Hamas has no role. The board will hand Gaza over to the Palestinian Authority once it has shown sufficient reforms.
• The board will also supervise Gaza’s reconstruction, which includes a Trump-led economic initiative to turn Gaza into a zone of opportunity.

The deal also creates an International Stabilization Force, placing international peacekeepers in the Gaza Strip to train and support Gazan police. Because Israel must withdraw, the international force would be the ones to disarm Hamas.

If Hamas accepts this deal, it will represent not an end to their radicalism, but a tactical shift. The jihadis are not giving up their fight.

Their likeliest move would be to shift their operations to the West Bank, much more strategically vital than Gaza.

As Khaled Abu Toameh wrote at the Gatestone Institute, Iran and its Palestinian terrorist proxies have already started moving their operations there.

Recently, armed cells belonging to Iranian-backed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (pij) have escalated their terrorist attacks in the West Bank against Israeli soldiers and civilians. [Israeli security] sources asserted that Iranian-linked elements were behind the scheme to turn the West Bank into a further battlefield against Israel. …

Even if the war in the Gaza Strip ends, Qatar, Iran, Hamas and pij will never give up the fight to destroy Israel and replace it with a radical Islamist state. The attempt to transform the West Bank into a second base for jihad highlights that ending the war in the Gaza Strip will not end the dream of wiping Israel off the map.

If the West Bank were to erupt in violence, confronting it would be much more troublesome for Israel and far more provocative of international outrage than the war in Gaza.

Bible prophecy shows that the hottest Arab-Jew conflict is due to erupt in Jerusalem, the contested heart of the country. Zechariah 14:2 describes half of the city being taken and that violence sparking a broader war, Gerald Flurry explains in “Jerusalem: About to Explode,” Chapter 3 of Jerusalem in Prophecy.

The immediate outcome of President Trump’s latest peace effort will be better understood in the next few days and coming weeks. But the notion that it will produce “eternal peace” is entirely wrong. God promises that the “City of Peace” will enjoy eternal peace—but only when it is governed by the King of kings.