Israel has identified the remains of three more hostages following a second release by Hamas on Tuesday, bringing the number of deceased hostages in Gaza to 21.

But even as the conditions of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement were still being met, both President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated that further fighting could be in the future if Hamas does not move forward with disarming — as footage from Gaza shows it is far from doing.

The three hostages whose remains were returned were Uriel Baruch, Eitan Levy and Tamir Nimrodi. Nimrodi’s death had not previously been confirmed, though Israeli authorities said there was “grave concern” about his condition. The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said he had been abducted alive but was subsequently killed in an Israeli airstrike.

A fourth set of remains sent to Israel was not that of a hostage and likely came from a Gazan, officials said DNA analysis showed.

More remains could be released on Wednesday as Hamas faces calls to hold up its end of the deal struck last week, which required the return of all 48 Israeli hostages. All 20 living hostages and four deceased hostages were released on Monday.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who pressed for the deal, called attention to Hamas’ delay in returning the deceased hostages in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday. But he also said that the second phase of the ceasefire, in which a lasting peace and plan for Gaza’s future governance is supposed to be negotiated following the release of all hostages, was already underway.

“ALL TWENTY HOSTAGES ARE BACK AND FEELING AS GOOD AS CAN BE EXPECTED. A big burden has been lifted, but the job IS NOT DONE,” Trump wrote. “THE DEAD HAVE NOT BEEN RETURNED, AS PROMISED! Phase Two begins right NOW!!!”

Meanwhile, footage showed Hamas operatives emerging from hiding in Gaza and reasserting themselves in the enclave, including by executing those seen as having opposed Hamas during the war with Israel.

Trump’s peace proposal called for Hamas to disarm and not play a role in governing Gaza, but the group has not agreed to those terms. Trump said before traveling to Israel on Monday that Hamas had been given temporary approval to act as a police force in Gaza.

“Well, they are standing because they do want to stop the problems, and they’ve been open about it, and we gave them approval for a period of time,” he told reporters.

On Tuesday, he said the show of force “didn’t bother me much, to be honest with you,” because the group had targeted rivals “that were very bad.”

But both Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated that a long-term failure to demilitarize by Hamas could risk a return to fighting.

“They’re going to disarm, and because they said they were going to disarm. And if they don’t disarm, we will disarm them,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. He was then pressed on how he knew the group would do something it has said it would not do.

“I don’t have to explain that to you, but if they don’t disarm, we will disarm them. They know I’m not playing games,” Trump said. “If they don’t disarm, we will disarm them, and it’ll happen quickly and perhaps violently. But they will disarm.”

Netanyahu told CBS News that he understood Trump’s comments to be a version of the threats Trump made on social media that coincided with a ceasefire deal moving forward: Disarm or “all hell breaks loose,” Netanyahu said.

The Israeli prime minister said he hoped it would not come to that. “We agreed to give peace a chance,” Netanyahu said, adding, “I hope we can do this peacefully. We’re certainly ready to do so.”

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President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan – which was reinforced in principle during a “peace summit” on Monday with the presidents of Egypt and Turkey, and the Emir of Qatar – is long on intention and short on details. Aaron David Miller, who advised six secretaries of state on Arab-Israeli negotiations under both Republican and Democratic presidents, says the road map may offer limited help in navigating peace in a place fraught with challenges.

Phase One

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted the terms of the deal during a White House meeting in September, while Hamas has agreed to only the plan’s first phase, which mandates an immediate ceasefire, an Israeli troop withdrawal to an agreed upon line, a return of the hostages held by Hamas, and the release of Palestinian prisoners.

The ceasefire’s fragility is already apparent. Today, Israeli forces killed several Palestinians in Gaza City who they say were “crossing a yellow line” that is under IDF control as part of the ceasefire agreement.

Only four of about two dozen deceased hostages were turned over to Israeli authorities on Monday, with four more turned over on Tuesday. Egyptian teams are working to locate the remains, as the Red Cross warned that some may never be found.

Israeli officials reduced the number of aid trucks allowed into Gaza to 300 trucks daily, from the 600 originally intended, because of the delays in returning the dead hostages.

What’s missing

Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says that what the plan leaves out may be just as significant as what it includes.

“This is not the Oslo agreement. It doesn’t call for Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. It’s not a peace agreement between Israel and key Arab states,” Miller said. “It is a road map that could potentially end the war in Gaza. That’s what it is. It’s nothing more than that.”

One of the reasons Netanyahu was able to accept the plan, Miller said, is because there are enough provisions to satisfy the majority of the Israeli public, such as Hamas disarmament.

“It’s inherently a pro-Israeli plan, both in terms of structure and substance,” Miller said. “You could have created this plan in an Israeli laboratory.”

What the plan says will happen to Hamas, Gaza, and Palestinians

According to the plan, “Gaza will be redeveloped for the benefit of the people of Gaza, who have suffered more than enough.”

Specifics include that Gaza “will be governed under the temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee.” The committee will “be made up of qualified Palestinians and international experts,” with oversight from a “Board of Peace” headed by Trump, until it is determined that the Palestinian Authority has sufficiently reformed and can effectively govern.

Hamas will “agree to not have any role in the governance of Gaza, directly, indirectly, or in any form,” the plan says. “All military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt.”

But Hamas has said it will not lay down its arms. According to Miller, Hamas’ main objective — political survival and the need to retain influence in Gaza’s government — has not changed.

“What are the terms and circumstances [of disarmament]? What do you do about the tunnel infrastructure? Does Hamas get to keep its personal weapons, for example?” Miller said. “Every point in this plan is filled with a universe of complexity and detail that’s yet to be negotiated.”

The plan also says that “No one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return. We will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza.”

The provision marks a departure from Trump’s previous plan to turn Gaza into a “Riviera of the Middle East,” which called on Arab states to absorb Gaza’s displaced population. Trump had said those relocations would be permanent, with no right of return.

Still, some aspects of the plan nod to his idea for real estate development, including the establishment of a special economic zone with preferred tariff rates and “a Trump economic development plan.”

The agreement also establishes “an interfaith dialogue process” with the goal to “change mindsets and narratives of Palestinians and Israelis by emphasizing the benefits that can be derived from peace.”

The plan concludes that when these processes are complete, “the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which we recognize as the aspiration of the Palestinian people.”

But Miller remains dubious that the language is meaningful.

“I suppose you might argue that the nod to Palestinian statehood could be a problem [for Israel], but it’s so general and so distant as to be more or less not terribly relevant,” he said.

The post How phase one of the Gaza peace plan is beginning to fray appeared first on The Forward.

It was impressive, no question about that: A sitting American president, flanked by the heads of Egypt, Turkey and Qatar — among dozens of other countries — signing a document that contains all the right words and sentiments needed for achieving Middle East peace.

But Tuesday’s display in the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh may be all for naught. For Hamas to disarm and disappear — which is the only way that this two-year nightmare can truly end well — massive, sustained, multi-dimensional and focused pressure will be needed in the days and weeks ahead.

The newly signed so-called Trump Declaration for Enduring Peace and Prosperity is a far-reaching and courageous diplomatic text. It unambiguously denounces radicalization and violent extremism, signalling that the Arab states are no longer willing to indulge militancy as a permanent fact of life — a major move in shifting the balance of the Arab-Israeli conflict away from jihadism. The declaration also does something else extraordinary: it explicitly acknowledges the Jewish historical and spiritual connection to the land of Israel, and insists on “friendly and mutually beneficial relations between Israel and its regional neighbors.”

The text envisions new efforts to create peace between Israelis and Palestinians, on the heels of the Gaza war, not as working toward a reluctant truce, but rather as a civilizational project grounded in tolerance, education, opportunity and shared prosperity. All of this — if it is to be enforced — will represent a moral revolution for a region long trapped in denial, grievance, and violence. It suggests the assembled are truly ready for an end to the cycles of violence.

The symbolism does have meaning. That Qatar and Turkey, both of which have long existed in enmity with Israel, lined up behind a statement calling for peaceful coexistence is no small thing. For a region so long dominated by grievance, that alone suggests a tectonic shift.

But symbolism is not a plan.

The leaders who signed the Tuesday statement know this, and have thrown their weight behind the successful execution of President Donald Trump’s peace plan, which both Israel and Hamas have agreed to. “We acknowledge that the Middle East cannot endure a persistent cycle of prolonged warfare, stalled negotiations, or the fragmentary, incomplete, or selective application of successfully negotiated terms,” they wrote.

Reading between the lines, that’s an acknowledgment that there is one major way in which the plan could fail: If Hamas refuses to disarm and vacate Gaza. That one clause — buried among the 20 points of the deal Trump announced two weeks ago — is the fulcrum on which the entire edifice rests. And the problem is that this “successfully negotiated term” has not been publicly agreed to by Hamas. Trump merely announced that peace had been achieved. And experienced observers of Hamas know that the group will seek any possible out to ensure their own survival.

If they find one, and Trump and his regional collaborators don’t crack down, then the whole thing collapses. The Arab leaders can declare peace, but if Hamas still has weapons, the war is not over. It’s paused.

The early signs are bad, despite Hamas’ release of the 20 remaining living hostages on Monday. Even as Trump and the Arab leaders signed their declaration, reports from Gaza described Hamas commanders consolidating power, executing accused collaborators, and appointing local “emirs” to replace municipal officials. The group is not surrendering; it is reorganizing.

Trump’s triumph is real enough in the short term. But if the deal falters on this front, it will mean disaster for Gaza, where Israel would be within its rights to resume the war to oust Hamas. It could also be a death stroke for the career of embattled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. If Hamas doesn’t disarm, and reestablishes power, Netanyahu’s critics will argue correctly that what actually occurred — ending the fighting in exchange for the hostages — was achievable since the very early days of the war, when many more people were still alive. Netanyahu will be accused of having fought, and sacrificed, for nothing — except for, perhaps, the survival of his extremely unpopular far-right coalition.

Though unseemly to admit, some in Israel may be quietly hoping for this outcome: That Hamas, true to form, will make a mockery of the deal, and ensure that Netanyahu cannot escape political judgment for his failures — leading up to the attack of Oct. 7, 2023, and ever since.

I sympathize: Netanyahu is terrible for Israel. But it’s in all our best interests to hope against that result, and for the peace powerfully if vaguely outlined in Tuesday’s agreement. We must hope, too, that Trump resists his habitual pattern of losing interest. His pattern in global affairs — from North Korea to Iran — has been to claim credit and move on, leaving others to clean up the contradictions. If that happens again here, the “Trump Peace Agreement” will join a long list of Trumpian theatrics.

The post Trump drew Arab leaders into a historic peace agreement. Too bad about the one glaring caveat appeared first on The Forward.