Who Defines Peace in Gaza Now? Trump and Netanyahu Meet Again as the “Next Phase” Becomes the Fight

Subheadline: A ceasefire is a sentence everyone reads differently. After Trump’s Mar-a-Lago meeting with Netanyahu, the words “disarm,” “withdraw,” and “West Bank” are back to doing the dangerous work.

By Carlos Taylhardat | 3 Narratives News | October 5, 2025

Update (December 30, 2025): This story has been updated to reflect President Trump’s December 29 meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago, including new public remarks about the West Bank, the “next phase” of the Gaza plan, and Israel’s stated condition tied to the remains of hostage Ran Gvili.

Intro

Mar-a-Lago has its own kind of theater. The chandeliers and palm shadows soften the edges, even when the subject is war. On December 29, President Donald Trump greeted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with the warmth of old allies and the impatience of men who believe history should move faster when they enter the room.

Outside, reporters shouted the questions that never fully leave the region: hostages, Gaza, Iran, the West Bank. Inside, two leaders tried to make the next chapter sound inevitable. Trump offered the language of deadlines and deals. Netanyahu offered the language of security and conditions. Between them hovered a word that has become both promise and weapon: peace.

In the days since, the public readouts have made one thing clear. Even when Washington and Jerusalem appear aligned, they are negotiating the meaning of the same map. Trump said he and Netanyahu do not “agree… 100%” on the West Bank. Netanyahu’s camp described “next steps” as impossible until one last hostage’s remains return home. And Gaza, as always, waited for the meeting to become something more than a photo.

Context

On September 29, 2025, President Trump unveiled what he called a comprehensive twenty-point plan aimed at ending the Gaza war: hostages out, aid in, an interim governing arrangement in Gaza, and, eventually, a future in which Hamas no longer rules or fields weapons. A ceasefire followed in October, reducing some fighting and opening limited space for negotiations, but leaving the core arguments intact: who governs, who disarms, who withdraws, and on what timeline.

On December 29, Trump and Netanyahu met at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to discuss the “next phase” of that plan, including the demand that Hamas disarm and Gaza be demilitarized, plus regional issues that keep bleeding into the same conversation, particularly Iran. Afterward, Trump acknowledged disagreement with Netanyahu over the Israeli-occupied West Bank, without saying what his preferred outcome would be.

The meeting also landed amid intensifying international scrutiny of West Bank violence and settlement expansion, and amid continued U.S. military support to Israel. On the same day, the Pentagon announced an $8.6 billion Boeing contract connected to the delivery of new F-15 jets for Israel’s air force, a reminder that diplomacy and hardware often travel together.

For readers looking for the plain-language stakes: Gaza’s ceasefire is not a finished peace. It is a pause that both sides are trying to convert into their preferred end state. That is why the negotiations keep circling the same verbs. “Disarm” is the hinge word for Israel and Trump. “Withdraw” is the hinge word for Palestinians. “West Bank” is the word that can collapse the whole bridge.

Related reading: our previous Gaza context explainer here, and our earlier look at Trump’s peace posture here.

Narrative 1 (Side A): The Trump–Netanyahu View — Order Before Freedom

Start with the premise that Trump’s supporters repeat like a proverb: wars end when someone finally sets terms, enforces them, and refuses to be manipulated by delay. In this worldview, the Gaza plan is not a menu. It is a sequence. Hostages first, security second, governance third, reconstruction last. The goal is a Gaza that cannot be used as a launchpad, a bargaining chip, or a permanent crisis industry.

From this angle, the Mar-a-Lago meeting was about momentum. Trump wants the “next phase” to feel like a lock turning. Netanyahu wants the next phase to feel like a door that only opens when Israel is sure no one is lying behind it. When Trump says Hamas must disarm, it is framed as the moral center of the deal, not a negotiating position. You cannot rebuild a place, they argue, while an armed faction keeps the power to restart the war on demand.

“This is not about politics, it’s about humanity.” — President Trump (as framed by his allies when selling the plan)

Netanyahu’s circle, in turn, frames conditions as proof of seriousness. One Israeli official described a demand that the first stage be completed with Hamas returning the remains of the last Israeli hostage still in Gaza, Ran Gvili. His family joined the visiting entourage. In this telling, a ceasefire that cannot even complete the accounting of the dead is not a ceasefire worthy of moving forward.

There is also a strategic logic beneath the language. The plan’s later stages, as described by its proponents, require Gaza to be governed by administrators who can receive international funds without funneling them into weapons or patronage. It requires crossings to operate under monitoring, tunnels sealed, heavier weapons destroyed. The United States, in this worldview, is the only actor with enough leverage to force both compliance and financing, and Trump sees that leverage as a tool to be used, not admired.

Then comes the region’s deeper fuse: Iran. In the Trump–Netanyahu frame, Iran is not a separate file. It is the parent file. Tehran’s influence, its proxies, its missile and nuclear ambitions, these are described as the engine that keeps the region’s conflicts from ever truly ending. A Gaza deal that leaves Hamas armed is seen as a victory lap for Iran. A Gaza deal that removes Hamas’s weapons is seen as the beginning of a regional reset.

What about the West Bank, the question Trump did not answer? In this narrative, the West Bank is both sacred terrain and security buffer. Israeli settlers are not merely “settlers” to their supporters. They are families returning to ancestral hills, building communities under threat. Israel’s leadership, in this telling, cannot be expected to trade away strategic high ground or tolerate violence against Israelis. When Trump says he and Netanyahu do not agree 100%, supporters hear negotiation among friends, not rupture. They assume Trump will “come to a conclusion” that preserves Israeli security while keeping Arab partners at the table.

Finally, the hardware matters. Supporters note that U.S. military support signals deterrence. They argue it discourages wider war, because it makes the cost of escalation obvious. They see deals like the Pentagon’s F-15 contract as part of the same architecture: protect Israel, constrain Iran, end the Gaza war on terms that prevent a repeat.

In short: Order is not the enemy of peace. Order is the only road into it.

Narrative 2 (Side B): The Palestinian and Hamas View — Dignity Before Surrender

Begin with the sentence Palestinians have learned to translate into lived experience: “disarm.” They have heard it before, often spoken as if it is a technical step, a checkbox, an administrative clean-up after the real work of history. But to many Palestinians, disarmament without sovereignty is not peace. It is the final paperwork of defeat.

From this view, Trump’s plan is built backward. It demands that Palestinians give up the one form of leverage they possess before the world gives them anything enforceable in return. The timeline feels lopsided. The enforcement mechanisms feel foreign. The word “technocratic” sounds like a polite substitute for “controlled.”

And the Mar-a-Lago meeting, in this worldview, looked less like peacemaking and more like coordination. Trump speaks of “the next phase” while Israel keeps conditions. Israel speaks of security while Palestinians count homes, dead, displacement, detention. The proposed shape of Gaza’s future governance may sound neutral, but Palestinians have a long memory of “interim” arrangements that become permanent cages.

Then there is the West Bank, the part Trump admitted is disputed between him and Netanyahu. For Palestinians, this is not a side argument. It is the proof that Gaza cannot be separated from the larger question of land and rights. If the West Bank continues to be carved by settlements and protected by military law, what exactly is the model being offered to Gaza? A quieter occupation with better paperwork?

This is where international law enters the Palestinian story not as abstraction, but as a rare language of recognition. In July 2024, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s policies and practices in the occupied Palestinian territory, a document Palestinians cite as validation that the occupation and settlement enterprise cannot be made legitimate by time. In the Palestinian telling, the world has already written the legal conclusion. The problem is enforcement, and enforcement is always the part that disappears.

In this narrative, a “Board of Peace” supervised by international figures sounds less like accountability and more like trusteeship. Palestinians ask why the architects of their borders rarely stand in the queue for water, rarely watch their children flinch at drones, rarely need permission to move between cities. A ceasefire, they say, does not erase the daily humiliations that created resistance in the first place.

Even the hostage file is read differently. Palestinians do not dismiss Israeli grief. But they also see Palestinian prisoners and detainees as hostages of another kind, held for years under systems they experience as arbitrary and political. When Netanyahu’s camp ties the next stage to the remains of Ran Gvili, Palestinians hear a familiar asymmetry: Israeli suffering is treated as a diplomatic emergency, Palestinian suffering as background noise.

And the weapons? Palestinians who support armed resistance argue that history taught them what happens when you surrender leverage before you gain rights. They point to promises made and rescinded, talks that went nowhere, borders that never opened, elections that never produced freedom. To them, “disarm” is not a security demand. It is a demand to accept permanent inferiority.

Finally, the U.S. arms relationship with Israel is not neutral to Palestinians. A contract for new fighter jets is not simply an alliance detail. It is a reminder that the sky’s balance of power is not up for negotiation. Palestinians see a peace plan written by the side that also supplies the planes.

In short: They are not refusing peace. They are refusing a peace that requires them to disappear as a political people.

Narrative 3 (The Silent Story): The People Trapped in the Middle, and the Map That Never Stops Moving

Zoom out, and the most important detail about the Mar-a-Lago meeting is not the chandelier glow or the handshakes. It is that the region’s human calendar does not pause for diplomacy. A day in Gaza is not measured in communiqués. It is measured in water pressure, flour prices, hospital fuel, whether the road is open, whether a child sleeps through the night.

In the West Bank, too, “peace” is often experienced as the absence of headlines rather than the presence of rights. UN humanitarian reporting in late 2025 described settler violence reaching its highest recorded levels in recent years during the olive harvest season, along with injuries, vandalism, and rising fear across dozens of communities. This matters because it turns the West Bank from a diplomatic “final status” issue into a daily emergency, and emergencies do not wait politely behind negotiation schedules.

This is the quiet engine beneath both narratives. The Trump–Netanyahu camp treats Gaza as a security puzzle that can be solved by disarmament and administration. Hamas and its supporters treat Gaza as a dignity puzzle that can only be solved by sovereignty and withdrawal. Meanwhile, ordinary families are living inside a third puzzle: survival in a landscape where the rules keep changing and the enforcers rarely answer to them.

Notice what happens when “the next phase” becomes conditional. Aid becomes a bargaining chip. Crossings become leverage. Reconstruction becomes a promise that can be delayed without penalty. Even language becomes a tool. “Technocratic” can mean “competent,” or it can mean “unaccountable.” “Disarmament” can mean “safety,” or it can mean “submission.” The same words move through two worlds and arrive with different meanings, like letters delivered to the wrong address.

And there is one more layer that rarely gets named in official ceremonies: the future is being negotiated in the shadow of weapons sales and security partnerships that will outlast this news cycle. The Pentagon’s announcement of an $8.6 billion F-15 contract, timed alongside the diplomatic choreography, is not just procurement. It is a signal to the region about who will retain air dominance for the next decade. For Israelis, that can feel like reassurance. For Palestinians, it can feel like a verdict.

The silent story is not that leaders are lying, though sometimes they might be. It is that the incentives of power do not line up neatly with the needs of the powerless. Politicians can survive stalemate. Children cannot. Governments can trade timelines. Families cannot trade hunger. The map can be debated forever. People need a door that opens now.

If peace is going to be more than a slogan, it will have to answer the question both sides keep dodging: what protections exist for civilians the day after the cameras leave, and who is punished if those protections fail?

Further context: our earlier regional summit explainer here.

Key Takeaways

• Trump and Netanyahu met on December 29, 2025, to discuss the “next phase” of Trump’s Gaza plan, with disarmament and demilitarization still at the center.
• Trump publicly acknowledged he and Netanyahu do not agree “100%” on the West Bank, a rare admission that the Gaza track and the West Bank track are colliding again.
• Netanyahu’s camp has tied progress to specific conditions, including the return of the remains of hostage Ran Gvili, underscoring how fragile “next steps” remain.
• International law and UN reporting on West Bank violence continue to shape global pressure, even as U.S. military support for Israel remains firm.
• The overlooked reality is humanitarian: negotiations can stall indefinitely, but civilian life cannot.

Questions This Article Answers

1. What changed after Trump’s December 29 meeting with Netanyahu?
   The meeting refocused attention on the “next phase” of Trump’s Gaza plan and brought new public friction into view, especially Trump’s admission of disagreement with Netanyahu on the West Bank.
2. Why is “disarmament” the key sticking point?
   For Israel and Trump, disarmament is the guarantee that Gaza cannot restart a war. For Hamas and many Palestinians, disarmament without sovereignty feels like surrender without protection.
3. What does the West Bank have to do with Gaza negotiations?
   In practice, everything. West Bank settlement growth and violence shape whether Palestinians believe “peace” changes their lives, and whether regional actors can sell normalization without a political horizon.
4. What role does international law play right now?
   Palestinians increasingly cite the International Court of Justice’s 2024 advisory opinion to argue the occupation and settlements are unlawful. Israel disputes this framing and emphasizes negotiated outcomes and security needs.
5. What is the “silent story” beneath both narratives?
   Civilians experience diplomacy as delay. Each stalled phase affects aid, movement, fuel, and safety, and those costs land on families who have no seat at the negotiating table.

Cover Image Brief

Concept: A cinematic split-scene “magazine cover” image. Left side: Trump and Netanyahu under warm, gilded indoor lighting, a tight handshake framed by chandeliers and palm shadows, suggesting power and private deals. Right side: a muted, dust-toned Gaza street with a family silhouette near a damaged building and a distant aid truck, suggesting life paused in uncertainty. The seam between scenes should feel like a paper tear across a map.

Alt text (accurate, descriptive): “Trump and Netanyahu meet in Florida as Gaza civilians wait for the next phase of a ceasefire plan.”

Style notes: Editorial realism, shallow depth of field, high contrast, no graphic imagery, no visible wounds, focus on faces, hands, and the atmosphere of waiting.

Process & AI-Use Disclosure

This article was reported and written by Carlos Taylhardat. AI tools may have been used to assist with background organization and copyediting. All core factual claims in the update were checked against the linked sources. If you spot an error, please see our corrections log. Learn more about our process: How we use AI.