On Monday, President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet at Mar-a-Lago in what may be the most consequential moment for the stalled Gaza peace plan. The three-phase scheme went into effect in October, with both Israel and Hamas accepting the initial terms and agreeing to a ceasefire. In mid-November, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution endorsing the plan, which Trump’s Ambassador to the U.N., Mike Waltz, hailed as “charting a new course in the Middle East for Israelis and Palestinians.” The Palestinian Authority’s Vice-President, Hussein al-Sheikh, later met with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and a U.S. representative in Ramallah, and commended the efforts of Trump and mediating governments in “consolidating the ceasefire, facilitating the entry of humanitarian aid, reconstruction, and moving toward the making of peace, security, and stability.” For weeks, though, the plan has been stuck in phase one, despite the White House’s claims that the transition to the next phase is imminent, and Gaza has continued to deteriorate under conditions the ceasefire was meant to end.

It is no surprise that the peace plan has stalled. Each stage is more difficult to implement than the last. Phase one began on October 10th with a ceasefire, prisoner exchanges, and an Israeli withdrawal to what became known as the “yellow line”—a monitored boundary that left Israel in control of more than half of Gaza. The phase was also supposed to include a large increase in humanitarian aid, and to allow Palestinians to begin returning to certain areas. It also conditions reconstruction on Palestinian institutions meeting security benchmarks and treats the demilitarization of Hamas and other armed factions as a precondition for any horizon of Palestinian self-rule. Phase two calls for the disarmament of Hamas, further Israeli withdrawals, and the deployment of an International Stabilization Force (I.S.F.) composed of foreign troops tasked with enforcing the zonal map and maintaining stability. Phase three would complete the Israeli withdrawal and establish longer-term governance arrangements under a Board of Peace—a new institution, chaired by the United States and including Israel, Egypt, and key ally states.

But the plan does more than sequence withdrawals and define phases. It locks in the zonal map created by the war, dividing Gaza into areas of unequal access and control (by defining where Palestinians may live and rebuild, for instance). Hamas, which initially accepted the ceasefire text, now denounces the framework as an effort to turn an emergency pause into a permanent security order. The group refuses to disarm and rejects any international force operating within Gaza to enforce demilitarization, arguing that such measures would favor Israel and violate its right to armed resistance. Israeli officials, meanwhile, have emphasized the need to preserve buffer zones and positions along the Gaza Strip. They’ve insisted on maintaining what they call “operational freedom” to conduct raids whenever they deem necessary.

Palestinians, who were largely excluded from the drafting process, enter the structure only once their institutions—implicitly, a reshaped Palestinian Authority—meet benchmarks set by the Board of Peace, such as transparency, capacity, and good governance. The Authority has not held national elections since 2006, when the vote produced a Hamas victory; it continues to govern parts of the West Bank through security coördination with Israel and a system of patronage that has left it widely distrusted, particularly in Gaza. But a technocratic P.A. answering to Washington’s criteria is not the same as an elected one answering to Palestinians. The peace plan treats reform as a substitute for a political process in which Palestinians themselves have a say.

In Gaza, people are still trying to make sense of the new map, set forth by the first phase of the plan, which divides their home into three color-coded zones. The green zone is a band of territory that hugs much of Gaza’s eastern perimeter and includes other areas seized through months of Israeli ground operations. It’s the only part of the Strip where reconstruction is authorized in the early stages. The plan envisages that foreign contractors will build critical infrastructure and center humanitarian operations there, under the close supervision of the I.S.F. and the Israeli Army, which retains a functional veto over what is rebuilt, and also where and when.

The red zone comprises districts that, together, make up about half of Gaza. There, little or no rebuilding is planned until security demands—such as verified disarmament, stable patrol lines, and cleared supply routes—are met. This area includes the majority of Gaza’s most densely populated neighborhoods. Given the political impasse and Hamas’s refusal to disarm, there’s no realistic path to meeting these conditions anytime soon—which means rebuilding in the red zone is indefinitely stalled. The plan treats this destruction as a given and encodes displacement as an acceptable, even rational, outcome of the war.

Between the two zones runs the yellow line, a boundary that is supposed to act as a temporary security seam. But, for now, Israel appears reluctant to roll the line back and has every incentive to maintain it. Since the ceasefire began, Israel has constructed at least thirteen new military outposts inside Gaza and expanded forty-eight existing ones, according to satellite imagery analyzed by the research group Forensic Architecture. The group also found that Israel has built roads connecting these outposts to its domestic military bases, demolished Palestinian property in areas not previously destroyed, and physically moved the yellow line westward by placing markers beyond the boundary shown on its own maps. (The I.D.F. has denied shifting the line.) Although Trump’s plan explicitly states that Israel will progressively withdraw and hand over territory in Gaza to the International Stabilization Force, on the ground Israel is consolidating what appears to be a permanent military presence across more than half of Gaza.

Netanyahu has promoted the idea of “voluntary migration” among Gazans. “Any Gazan who wants to get out can get out,” he said in a recent video statement. “You don’t expel anyone, but if a person wants to get out, let them get out. If the Egyptians accept this, I think it’s a very positive thing.” The Prime Minister’s remarks suggest that mass displacement remains central to Israel’s vision for Gaza’s future.

The Trump Administration, keen to move on to phase two, is reportedly frustrated at what one official described to Axios as “Israeli inflexibility on several Gaza-related issues”—Israel’s continued strikes, restrictions on aid, and refusal to fully open border crossings, all of which were supposed to be resolved in phase one. The Mar-a-Lago meeting is a chance for Netanyahu to appeal directly to the President and secure backing to keep control of the process. The Trump Administration is also sharpening its threats toward Hamas to disarm and comply with the deal. But the implementation of phase two as a whole—and the creation of the I.S.F. in particular—is exactly where the plan’s contradictions become impossible to ignore. In written responses to questions about the zonal map and the force’s mandate, a U.S. State Department official described the I.S.F. as the necessary foundation for any future political or economic change in Gaza. (“The path to prosperity for Gaza requires security first,” he said.) And yet no Palestinian institution with a claim to represent Gaza has formally consented to the presence of an international force there. Hamas rejects the demilitarization clause at the heart of the plan, which is a key part of phase two. This summer, in a letter to Emmanuel Macron and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, P.A. president Mahmoud Abbas wrote, “the Palestinian State should be the sole provider of security on its territory.” (He added that the P.A. “has no intention to be a militarized State.”)

The scope of the I.S.F.’s responsibilities is detailed. Everything else about it is vague. The force is expected to deploy in territories where Israeli troops will still be able to operate. But the resolution does not outline any structure for limiting or overseeing Israeli military operations, nor does it specify how the I.S.F. should respond if those operations conflict with its mandate. Egypt, for example, has said that, if deployed as part of the I.S.F., its forces would participate only in a peacekeeping mission. Israel, meanwhile, wants a force that will not constrain its operations.

Even if the I.S.F. could be assembled, it would face a structural problem: it is a military unit designed to patrol zones and hold lines, not a body that is structured to manage reconstruction or engage in political work. It would inherit unresolved disputes over the pace and scope of Israeli withdrawals, deep mistrust between Palestinian factions, and the absence of a Palestinian government with real legitimacy in Gaza. The organization is meant to guarantee aid routes that still depend on Israeli inspections, guard reconstruction projects that can take place only in certain zones, and enforce a yellow line whose location appears to be in flux. Missions built on this kind of imbalance rarely proceed smoothly.

The Board of Peace established by November’s U.N. resolution is responsible for overseeing the I.S.F., coördinating reconstruction, and shepherding the reform of Palestinian institutions. It can recommend changes to the I.S.F.’s mandate, approve or suspend rebuilding plans, and decide when conditions are ready for the next phase. These mechanisms could convert the current phase-one ceasefire agreement into a more durable arrangement in which Palestinians remain under tight military control, with their land sliced into zones of unequal rights and access, and their future managed by foreign powers.

In late November, I exchanged messages with Omar Awadallah, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs for the P.A. He denied the idea that the peace plan’s zonal map would lead to permanent fragmentation, pointing to earlier U.N. Security Council resolutions that he said reject any reduction of Gaza’s territory. But, if the experience of the Oslo Accords—where Areas A, B, and C in the West Bank hardened from interim arrangements into a permanent cartography of control—is any guide, provisional lines drawn in the name of security almost never remain provisional.

The ceasefire itself has done little to improve the conditions of life in Gaza. Israel has repeatedly opened and closed crossings, including Rafah and Kerem Shalom, during disputes over the remains of hostages and the terms of Hamas’s disarmament. Officials spoke of up to six hundred aid trucks a day entering Gaza, but U.N. figures show that the number between October and November was closer to a hundred a day. Though some Israeli restrictions on permissible aid items have loosened, others remain astonishingly specific: Israel still bars school supplies such as pencils and paper. International organizations warn of the risk of falling back into famine if conditions worsen.

Meanwhile, Gaza’s death toll has kept climbing. Since the ceasefire began, on October 10th, about four hundred Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Israel says that these were targeted operations against Hamas militants. Hamas says that Israel is creating pretexts to avoid honoring the agreement. U.S. officials describe the ceasefire as still holding, and have urged both sides to treat the killings as incidents to be managed and not as a return to war. There is no reckoning with whether a ceasefire that permits one side to continue killing can be called a ceasefire at all.

It’s unclear what the meeting between Trump and Netanyahu will mean. Presumably, the two will try to salvage what’s left of the peace plan’s framework. But even if the plan moves forward, it remains fundamentally flawed. It’s not simply that Palestinians were excluded from the drafting of the plan, or from the ongoing negotiations, but that there’s no one on the ground who can actually carry out what the plan envisions. In the meantime, people continue to be killed, food and aid remain scarce, and everyone knows how easily the war could return.

The Palestinian people have lived through many rounds of war, and many ceasefires that have left core grievances unaddressed. Trump’s plan may promise a way out of this crisis, by offering structure, timelines, and a military force, but it lacks a political horizon grounded in Palestinian agency, the one thing a long-term strategy for Gaza can’t function without. It’s hard to imagine that an arrangement designed without local consent, implemented by a multinational force that has not yet been assembled, and dependent on institutions that have no legitimacy, would be able to produce anything other than a new, more tightly managed, form of control. The next explosion, when it comes, may once again be described as unforeseen rather than as inevitable. ♦