Marco Rubio passes Trump handwritten note on Gaza peace plan \u2013 video<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nMany of the details of the agreement reached after 3 days of indirect talks in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh remain unclear and challenges of implementing its terms are immense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If negotiators have closed gaps between Hamas and Israel over the details of the first phase of the 21-point\u00a0plan announced by Trump\u00a0in the White House last week, it was not immediately certain whether the parties had made any progress on thornier questions, such as how Hamas will be disarmed, as Netanyahu has demanded, and eventual governance of Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the agreement, if implemented, would bring the two sides closer than any previous effort to halt a war that had evolved into a regional conflict, drawing in countries such as Iran, Yemen and Lebanon, and reshaping the Middle East. One earlier ceasefire lasted just ten days, the other six weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the announcement of the deal, Trump told Fox News that the US would play a role in helping to rebuild war-torn Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll be involved in helping them make it successful, and helping it stay peaceful,\u201d the president said, adding he was \u201cvery confident there\u2019ll be peace in the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If few need reminding of how hard it will be to win a durable peace, no one is ignorant of the potential cost of further hostilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More than 67,000, mostly civilians, have been killed in the relentless Israeli offensive with more than 170,000 injured. Some\u00a020,000 children are among the dead. Much of Gaza has been reduced to ruins, its people now homeless and destitute in the rubble of their homes among barren fields and broken roads. Witnesses describe entire neighbourhoods, even towns, reduced to fine gravel. Thousands more casualties are thought to be buried and yet to be identified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
About 1,200 people, also mostly civilians, were killed by Hamas militants in the raid on Israel of 7 October, the worst such loss in the history of the country. A further 251 were taken hostage. Hundreds of Israeli servicemen and women have died in the war in Gaza. Hamas has already said that it will have difficulty locating the remains of all the dead hostages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In recent days, Israel reduced the intensity of its military campaign at Trump\u2019s behest, but it has not halted strikes altogether. Gaza medical authorities reported eight people killed in Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours, the lowest toll for weeks. Daily death tolls had been about 10 times as high over the past month as Israeli forces advance on Gaza City.Even if aid surges in, through the UN and the Red Crescent as specified under Trump\u2019s plan, hundreds of thousands will still not have enough food or shelter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The war in Gaza has spilled across the region, triggering further conflicts in Lebanon, Yemen and Iran. The relief of many regional rulers, who faced waves of popular anger, will be great, if tempered with some anxiety about what may follow in Gaza. They will now have to answer the question of who will provide troops for the promised stabilisation force in Gaza or pay for its reconstruction, which will take decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agence France-Presse, the Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israel and Hamas have agreed to the initial phase of a \u201cpeace plan\u201d in Gaza, pausing hostilities in the devastated territory and bringing the best hope yet of a definitive end to a bloody two-year conflict that has killed tens of thousands, destabilised much of the Middle East and prompted protests across the world. Donald […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":46688,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6850,6349,5569,11935,9778,3782,10387,12758,12283,287,9331,6848,10767,6083,7234,539,10541,5241,12246,5049,4066,7428,6738,8008,6496,8254,5575,2629,12332,10736,1445,2264,6345,5930,3259,10598,10825,12173,8251,5440,11111,11493,3095,8191,8331,9515,10454,10342,9667,12899,8719,5572,5865,12085,9237,5568,6821,1198,5396,7039,3805,3174,11926,8552,11774,10599,7348,6431,5655,8547,1898,13300,11899,11325,8840,9030,3094,9178,146,2570,6932,12605,5180,5465,9262,6348,11331,10885,8033,5251,13067,12790,6571,2982,5320,36,594,5509],"class_list":["post-46814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-aid","tag-antonio-guterres","tag-arab","tag-blessed","tag-bloodshed","tag-cabinet","tag-campaign","tag-captured","tag-ceasefire","tag-children","tag-city","tag-civilians","tag-conflict","tag-dead","tag-death","tag-delay","tag-destitute","tag-died","tag-diplomatic","tag-egypt","tag-el","tag-envoys","tag-families","tag-far-right","tag-food","tag-fox-news","tag-france","tag-gaza","tag-gaza-city","tag-gaza-strip","tag-god","tag-government","tag-guterres","tag-hamas","tag-homeless","tag-homes","tag-hostage","tag-hostages","tag-humanitarian-aid","tag-india","tag-injured","tag-interview","tag-israel","tag-jared-kushner","tag-keir-starmer","tag-killed","tag-killing","tag-law","tag-lebanon","tag-marco-rubio","tag-middle-east","tag-military","tag-muslim","tag-nations","tag-nio","tag-palestinian","tag-palestinians","tag-parliament","tag-peace","tag-phone","tag-president","tag-prime-minister","tag-prisoners","tag-qatar","tag-raid","tag-rebuild","tag-red-sea","tag-release","tag-security","tag-sheikh","tag-special-envoy","tag-stabilisation","tag-steve-witkoff","tag-street","tag-strong","tag-success","tag-tel-aviv","tag-troops","tag-truth","tag-turkey","tag-turkiye","tag-uk","tag-ukraine","tag-un","tag-united-states","tag-us","tag-us-president","tag-victory","tag-video","tag-war","tag-wars","tag-weekend","tag-white","tag-white-house","tag-women","tag-world","tag-who","tag-yemen"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46814"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46816,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46814\/revisions\/46816"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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