October 7, 2023, was both a moral and a strategic rupture. Any plan that claims to chart a path forward must begin by acknowledging that such an atrocity cannot pass without real consequences for its perpetrators and the ideology that enabled it.
US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza – framed around no annexation of the West Bank, no displacement of Palestinians, and no undermining of a two-state horizon – offers a pragmatic structure for that accountability. Its animating thesis is clear: Israel’s security and Palestinian dignity are not mutually exclusive, but they are impossible as long as Hamas retains power or leverage.
The plan’s success depends on one uncompromising condition: Hamas must be entirely removed from Gaza and from its future governance, with no amendments, exceptions, or “political wings” retained, and with full disarmament and withdrawal of its fighters from the Gaza Strip.
Pragmatism here does not mean moral ambiguity: It means sequencing achievable steps that change incentives on the ground. For Israel, the plan conditions a calm scenario on the dismantling of Hamas’s military capabilities, the return of the hostages, and verifiable guarantees that Gaza will never again be a launchpad for terror.
For Palestinians, it anchors reconstruction and a viable civic life in the immediate term – humanitarian access, infrastructure rebuilding, and an economic revival package – while explicitly rejecting annexation and mass displacement.
This is not a cosmetic balance; it is a hard trade that recognizes the lessons of October 7. A Gaza still governed by Hamas, or even partially shaped by it, would promise neither security for Israel nor a credible political future for Palestinians. Removing Hamas is not punitive symbolism; it is the precondition for preventing a repeat of October 7 and for burying, decisively, the nihilistic slogan of “Throw Israel into the sea.”
The mechanism to achieve this matters. Governance in Gaza would shift to a transitional technocratic authority led by Palestinian professionals, supported by international partners. This preserves Palestinian identity and ownership while denying a veto to a militant faction. It also strips away the familiar loophole in earlier processes whereby armed groups rebrand and reinsert themselves through elections or “unity” cabinets. Trump’s plan closes that loophole: no power-sharing, no phased rehabilitation, no semantic partitions between “political” and “military” wings. Disarmament means disarmament; withdrawal means withdrawal. Anything less invites relapse.
International involvement
Security enforcement is closely tied to international responsibility. A stabilization force, regional and global, would oversee the demobilization process, protect reconstruction, and train a professional Palestinian police service. This would reduce the need for prolonged Israeli military presence while building the institutional backbone that Gaza has lacked. It is the practical expression of the plan’s central insight: Sustainable calm requires security guarantees that neither Israel nor Palestinians can shoulder alone in the immediate term.
Crucially, the plan forces Hamas’s external enablers to choose: Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey cannot be both mediators and protectors of a militia that refuses demobilization. If Gaza’s reconstruction is a regional priority, endorsing a Hamas-free order is the test of seriousness. Qatar faces reputational costs if aid is conditioned on compliance; Egypt, burdened by border and Sinai security, has a clear interest in a demilitarized Gaza; and Turkey must weigh ideological sympathy against diplomatic isolation.
The implications for the Abraham Accords are direct. The accords were built on a wager: that Arab-Israeli normalization could create a wider architecture of stability and opportunity. Gaza has tested that wager. A plan that codifies no annexation and no displacement while removing a rejectionist militia strengthens the accords’ moral and strategic logic. It signals to the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and potential future partners that engagement with Israel can coexist with tangible gains for Palestinians.
If the Cairo implementation continues successfully, it will mark the first operational link between the Abraham Accords and Palestinian reconstruction, transforming normalization from a political framework into a platform for practical cooperation on the ground.
If the plan succeeds, normalization will look less like a bypass and more like a bridge. If it fails, critics will claim vindication that regional realignment ignored the core problem and was doomed to recoil.
A pragmatic plan
For Palestinians, the most consequential shift is psychological and generational. A Gaza free of Hamas and other militants offers a path where dignity is measured in functioning institutions, jobs, and mobility rather than in slogans and martyrs.
That is the “pragmatic thinking” which such a plan invites: that political agency is advanced not by maximalist rhetoric but by the stable conditions that make diplomacy and statehood imaginable. Extremist ideology cannot deliver those conditions; it can only consume them. The plan, by design, makes that choice visible.
None of this is frictionless. As of this writing, Hamas’s refusal to disarm is doctrinal, Israeli politics is fragmented, Palestinian public trust in US mediation is brittle, and international coordination is notoriously difficult.
But the plan’s virtue is precision. It does not ask the parties to leap to a final status. It asks them to meet enforceable milestones whose success is legible to ordinary people: hostages returned, rockets silenced, salaries paid, water and electricity restored, border procedures normalized, and schools rebuilt. It trades theatrical “breakthroughs” for verifiable progress, exactly the antidote to the performative cycles that preceded October 7.
There must also be clarity about consequences. If Hamas continues to reject such plans and refuses to completely disarm and withdraw, it gambles on a stalemate and it should therefore be unmistakable to Hamas and its supporters that the result will be catastrophic for the Palestinian people and their cause.
Refusal would forfeit reconstruction, deepen isolation, and harden the argument, across Arab capitals and in the West, that no political horizon is possible while a rejectionist militia holds a population hostage.
That is not a threat; it is an observable trend accelerated by October 7.
Conversely, if Hamas exits the stage, Gazans can unlock an influx of aid, security guarantees, and the first credible pathway in years toward political representation that is not subordinated to a militia’s agenda.
October 7 must have consequences for justice, for deterrence, and for the region’s political future. Trump’s plan channels those consequences into a disciplined framework: protect Israel’s security, preserve Palestinian dignity, fortify regional normalization, and end the armed veto over Gaza’s tomorrow.
The thesis is as stark as it is necessary: There can be no “next October 7” if there is no Hamas in Gaza, and there will be no credible Palestinian future if Hamas is allowed to define it. The plan’s outcome should be judged by a simple, humane metric: whether Israeli families can live without sirens and whether Palestinian children can grow up with schools, employment, and hope.
On both counts, the indispensable first step is the same: Hamas out, completely and irrevocably.■
Najwa AlSaeed is a member of MENA 2050 and contributes as a writer and researcher to several prominent publications. She can be contacted at najwasaied@hotmail.com.