What now for Gaza after hostage-prisoner exchange

With the release of the living hostages, the urgency of many calls for an end to the war will likely ease, as will pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to advance the next phases of the agreement.

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The bodies of four hostages were returned to Israel on Monday, and the other 24 hostages are expected to be handed over as part of the first phase of a ceasefire that requires Israel to allow the flow of food and other humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that if Hamas delayed returning the remaining bodies, it would be seen as a violation of the ceasefire agreement.

What happens now for the people in Gaza?

While there is an explosion of joy for prisoners returning from Israel within the scope of the hostage release agreement in Gaza, torture continues for war-weary Palestinians in the hope of a complete end to the conflict.

Gaza has been destroyed by Israeli bombardment for two years. Tens of thousands of Palestinians were killed. More than 90 percent of Gaza’s population of more than 2 million has been displaced. The medical system is broken. Little remains of the pre-war economy. Essential services are also in disarray. Houses and buildings were also leveled and cultivated fields were razed. Hunger is common.

These urgent needs will need to be addressed while also maintaining transit security and government systems. “There’s no luxury of sorting here,” says Lucy Kurtzer-Ellenbogen, a senior researcher at the Middle East Institute. “Everything has to happen at once.”

The World Bank, the United Nations and the European Union estimated earlier this year that the cost of rebuilding Gaza would be around $53 billion; This was a process that could take years. Wealthy Arab states are expected to help with this cost, but this involvement is expected to be met with assurances that there will be a path to Palestinian independence and that there will be no return to war.

Who will control Gaza now?

It remains unclear to what extent Trump’s peace proposal has reached agreement on two of the biggest sticking points: how much Israel is withdrawing from Gaza and how far Hamas is withdrawing from power.

Israel still controls roughly half of Gaza, and the future administration of the territory remains unclear.

Under the US plan, an interim international body would govern the region, overseeing Palestinian technocrats responsible for day-to-day affairs. However, it is unclear who will be tasked with this temporary institution, where it will be located and how the public will react.

It is also unclear who will oversee the “Peace Board”, which Trump said he will chair. Despite Trump’s plan to announce that former British prime minister Tony Blair would help chair the board, the president said Sunday that the idea was also temporary. Palestinians expressed their displeasure over Blair’s possible intervention.

Hamas said the Gaza government should be dissolved among Palestinians.

Although the plan calls for an eventual role for Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority – something Netanyahu has long opposed – it requires the organization to undergo reforms.

Abbas, 89, is unpopular among many Palestinians, and it is unclear whether a unifying figure can emerge to bring the various groups together.

Will Israeli troops completely withdraw from Gaza?

According to the plan, Israeli forces will leave the region with the deployment of a multinational force. Again, this time period still needs work. The plan would allow the IDF to maintain a presence around Gaza until the area is “appropriately secured against any re-emerging terrorist threat.”

The plan calls for the establishment of an Arab-led international security force in Gaza alongside the Palestinian police, but it is not known which countries will send forces, how they will be used and what will happen if they encounter resistance. Meanwhile, approximately 200 US soldiers are in Israel to monitor the ceasefire, but the Pentagon has announced that they will not play any role in Gaza.

So far the Israeli army has withdrawn from most of Gaza City, the southern city of Khan Younis and other areas. Troops maintain a presence in much of the southern city of Rafah, Gaza’s northernmost towns and along Gaza’s border with Israel.

Will Hamas disarm?

One of the most difficult issues to resolve is Israel’s insistence that Hamas lay down its weapons. Although Hamas has been weakened after two years of war, it is far from leaving power and fully disarmament as Netanyahu wants. He has so far refused to disarm and wants to ensure that Israel withdraws its troops completely.

According to Trump’s plan, after all hostages were returned to Israel, Hamas members would be granted amnesty if they committed to peaceful coexistence and laying down their weapons. Those who want to leave Gaza will be provided with safe passage to another country. The plan calls for “regional partners” to provide a “guarantee” that Hamas complies with these obligations. But a Hamas spokesman told Al Jazeera that while discussing with mediators how to reach a ceasefire, it was “not on the basis of the surrender of weapons.”

What about the Palestinian state?

Trump’s plan acknowledges that statehood is the desire of the Palestinian people and expresses the possibility that conditions may, over time, create a “credible path” to achieve it.

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This seems “deliberately very vague” on the issue of Palestinian statehood, according to Mona Yacoubian, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

He says the agreement appears designed to “exceed the minimum that the Palestinians and their Arab supporters will accept,” making no mention of the “two-state solution,” which is a non-starter for Israel.

On his way back to the United States on Monday night, Trump brushed aside questions about an independent Palestinian state and told reporters that the issue was different from his plan to rebuild Gaza.

“A lot of people like the one-state solution. Some people like the two-state solution. We’ll have to see,” Trump said. “At some point I will decide what is right, but I will coordinate with other states and countries.”

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Next steps

To solve these problems and prevent further conflict, the United States and other nations seeking a ceasefire must continue to apply pressure and pay attention, experts say.

It’s all layered on top of a legacy of conflict, deep mistrust between the parties, and the uncertain, conditional possibility of an eventual Palestinian state (an issue that has been a key sticking point for decades) and a non-starter for Netanyahu.