Faith leaders working toward peace in Israel and Palestine have met the ongoing ceasefire with wary hope—grateful for a step toward peace, but anxious about long-term justice.

“Our organizational position and a part of the sentiment I’m experiencing is a cautious hope,” said Rev. Mae Elise Cannon, Executive Director of Churches for Middle East Peace. “We’re not using optimism, we’re using hope.”

On Oct. 8, Israel and Hamas agreed to commence the first stage of a 20-point peace plan drawn up by President Donald Trump with the assistance of Middle East allies. The Trump-led plan marks the third cessation in fighting between Israel and Hamas since October 2023, after Hamas’s terrorist attacks on Israel, which killed 1,200 people, and Israel’s following offensive on Gaza which has killed more than 67,000. Israel’s military violence and blockading of aid and food have led to a humanitarian crisis that the UN and other groups have called a genocide.

In accordance with the plan, Israel has released almost 2,000 Palestinian captives; Hamas released 20 living captives and the bodies of 13 deceased captives. But other portions of the plan have not yet been implemented.

Hamas has attributed delays in retrieving the remains of the other 21 deceased captives to difficulties navigating Gaza’s destruction. In response, Israel originally only allowed half as many aid trucks as it agreed to. Israel’s military has also conducted two strikes, killing Palestinians. After reports of killings in the Gaza Strip by Hamas fighters, President Trump posted on Oct. 16 that “If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the Deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them.” And on Oct. 20, The New York Times reported that the White House was “increasingly concerned” that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could soon dismantle the agreement.

For Cannon, this is a reminder that a fully implemented peace plan will have to address more than the release of captives.

“This trajectory towards peace is a great thing, but the two major issues that both Israel and Hamas have not successfully negotiated are the timing of Israeli troops leaving Gaza and the disarmament of Hamas,” she said.

Long term liberation
Peace activists are also concerned that the plan will not lead to a free and secure future for Palestinians. None of the points of the peace plan affirm Palestinian statehood. While the majority of the UN member nations acknowledge a Palestinian state, the notion is referred to as an “aspiration of the Palestinian people” in the proposal.

“We will certainly celebrate if the hostages are released in addition to the release of thousands of Palestinians held in detention,” Cannon said. “But the main things we’re calling for are that the core causes of the conflict, including the decades-long occupation of the Palestinian people, be brought to an end. Our work won’t change much until those specific things are implemented.”

Greg Khalil, president and co-founder of Telos Group, an organization that trains and equips peacemakers across the U.S., echoed those sentiments.

“This feels exactly like what I’ve been through many times before,” Khalil, who has family in the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour and worked on Israeli disengagement from Gaza in 2005, said. “The actual plan isn’t talking about delivering peace … it envisions Israeli permanent control over Gaza.

“So here again, I have this fear that while today is a moment of celebration, many of the forces who brought us here still want to take us further down this road of supremacy and oppression,” he said.

The closest thing in the Trump peace plan to a self-governing body involves an “apolitical Palestinian committee” overseen by a board of officials, including Trump and Tony Blair, the former prime minister of Britain and an architect of the Iraq War.

Blair and Trump’s proposals follow the same general throughline of denying Palestinians the right to self-determination, suppressing the potential for resistance through mass demilitarization initiatives, and framing the razed and devastated Gaza as a real estate venture. Trump referred to Gaza as a “big real estate site” in February. Similarly, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich described Gaza as a “real estate bonanza” in September.

Read more: https://sojo.net/articles/news/trump-negotiated-ceasefire-gaza-peacemakers-are-hopeful-and-wary

By Erwin Kamuene | sojo.net