It has been an extraordinary day of enormous emotion and high drama but, for all that, we have only witnessed the first phase of the Trump peace plan – and in many ways that is the easy bit.
The first phase envisaged a ceasefire, the release of hostages, the release of many more Palestinians held in Israeli jails, a partial Israeli military withdrawal, and aid starting to flood back into Gaza.
Job done, although the aid bit is still a work in progress.
Trump and his team ripped up one of the golden rules of Middle Eastern negotiating to pull this off, no deal until a final deal.
They have turned that on its head, pushing for a breakthrough on what can be agreed on, and then committing to sorting out the rest later.
And it’s worked in the sense that it has delivered a spectacular day of achievements. The catch is it has postponed the harder bits, which now loom into view.
They include what happens to Hamas and whether it should be disarmed, creating a transitional authority to govern Gaza, and sending in a multinational peacekeeping force to provide security. There are plans for a “board of peace” to oversee everything, chaired by Donald Trump.
If there is progress on all of that, the Israeli military withdrawal is committed to withdraw further back to a narrow buffer on the edges of Gaza’s border. And ultimately, the hope is of continued momentum towards talks about Palestinian statehood and a “two-state solution”.
Donald Trump made it abundantly clear he believes this is only the start. This is, he said, “the historic dawn of a new Middle East”. There seem few limits to his peacekeeping ambition.
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But if the diplomacy is going to fulfil on the promise of his rhetoric, there must be progress on at least the security force and the transitional government for Gaza.
Because without that, the vacuum left by the retreating Israeli military could soon be filled by Hamas. It could then, in due course, rally, regroup, and at some point return to the fray.
The president has gathered together an impressive coalition of countries in Sharm, on the face of it, committed to his 21-point plan. He must now harness them to give Gazans an alternative vision they can believe in. Without it, his ambitious rhetoric remains just that.
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Negotiators decided to reach a deal on the first phase while leaving the details of the second fuzzy. But the plan was not so easily cleaved in two. Even during the narrow talks of the past few days, the pace and scale of Israel’s future withdrawals became an issue.
In public, some Hamas officials demanded that it pull out entirely once the last hostage was released – a big change to the Trump plan and a non-starter for Israel.
