Trump and Netanyahu Tell Hamas to Accept Gaza Cease-Fire Plan, Or Else

President Trump on Monday cast his plan for a cease-fire in Gaza as a landmark deal to bring peace after more than two years of catastrophic violence. But in reality, it was more like an ultimatum to Hamas.

Standing alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Mr. Trump unveiled a proposal to which both men had agreed. If Hamas refuses to do the same, Mr. Trump said, the United States will let Israel “do what you would have to do.”

“Israel would have my full backing to finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas,” said Mr. Trump, who under the plan would become the temporary chairman of a board in charge of the redevelopment of Gaza.

The joint appearance by Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu at the White House was a clear display of unity at a moment when Mr. Trump has shown signs of frustration with the Israeli prime minister, and when much of the world has grown horrified at Israel’s prosecution of the war against Hamas in Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.

But it was far from assured that Hamas would agree to their demands.

The U.S. plan contains provisions that Hamas has said publicly it will not accept, such as its removal from power and disarmament, leaving the proposal’s future uncertain and increasing the possibility that Israel will intensify its military campaign in the enclave, with the full support of the United States.

“When it comes to this plan, no one contacted us, nor were we part of the negotiations around it,” Taher al-Nounou, a senior Hamas official, said in a televised interview.

The proposal calls for an immediate cease-fire, after which Hamas would have 72 hours to return all Israel hostages, both dead and alive. In return, Israel would release 250 prisoners sentenced to life, plus 1,700 Gazans who were detained after the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre.

Once all hostages are returned, Hamas members who decommission their weapons would be given amnesty.

Notably, the proposal says nothing concrete about a pathway to Palestinian statehood. While it recognizes statehood “as the aspiration of the Palestinian people,” it says only that while Gaza is rebuilt and when an overhaul program by the authority “is faithfully carried out, the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway” to statehood.

Hamas would have to agree to play no role in governing Gaza in the future. And while Israel would pull back its forces by degrees within the Gaza Strip, it would maintain a sizable buffer zone inside Gaza’s borders “for the foreseeable future,” Mr. Netanyahu said.

Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations who worked for three Republican presidents, including Mr. Trump, said the Israel military campaign had put Hamas in such a weakened position that its leaders might have to accept the deal to save their own lives.

“It would have been a reasonable calculation for Hamas to say, ‘Look at the increasing isolation and condemnation of Israel. They will have to stop soon,’” Mr. Abrams said. “But Trump eliminated that possibility today. Now they won’t have to stop. This really corners them.”

Mr. Netanyahu proclaimed that the proposal “achieves our war aims.” And he said he would determine whether or not Hamas was complying with the agreement.

“If Hamas rejects your plan, Mr. President, or if they supposedly accepted and then basically do everything to counter it, then Israel will finish the job by itself,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “This can be done the easy way, or it can be done the hard way.”

The two leaders originally had planned to take questions from reporters, but in the end they did not. The moment was reminiscent of Mr. Trump’s appearance with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia last month in Alaska, where he sought a peace deal in the war in Ukraine. Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin appeared before reporters without an agreement and declined to take questions.

While the U.S. plan gives Mr. Netanyahu much of what he wants, it also shows that Mr. Trump has moved away from his proposal earlier this year to force Palestinians out of Gaza as part of a redevelopment plan.

Under the latest proposal, Mr. Trump said, Palestinians would be encouraged to stay in the Gaza Strip and offered “the opportunity to build a better Gaza.”

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

Still, the plan — even if Hamas were to agree to it — leaves many question marks and would deeply involve the United States.

Gaza would be governed by a committee called the “Board of Peace,” of which Mr. Trump would be the chairman and which would undertake its redevelopment.

Such an arrangement would constitute “some extra work to do,” Mr. Trump said, “but it’s so important that I’m willing to do it.”

Mr. Trump has long remarked on the potential value of the waterfront property of Gaza, and he did so again on Monday, lamenting the fact that Israel allowed the Palestinians to have control of the land.

“As a real estate person, I mean, they gave up the ocean,” he said, adding: “They gave up the ocean. I said ‘Who would do this deal?’”

Other members of the “Board of Peace” would include former Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. That board would govern Gaza until it determined that the Palestinian Authority had reformed itself enough to take over, the plan states.

“He has created a peace plan that, if in fact Hamas accepted it in principle, would require an extraordinary lift by the United States,” said Aaron David Miller, a former longtime State Department official who is now a Middle East analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Every single point is going to be negotiated to death.”

Mr. Miller said he was struck by how the peace proposal seemed to hinge so much on the president personally playing a role. “Trump signed up for something that I think is going to require an extraordinary amount of American involvement and monitoring, and he’s made himself the key monitor,” Mr. Miller said.

“This is not a throwaway cease-fire agreement,” he added. “This is the full monty here, and at the top of this full monty sits one Donald Trump.”