20-Point Gaza Ceasefire: One Of Many, Or The Last?

3 Oct 2025 Issue: 68 / 40 By: James Marriott

Nearly two-years on from 7 October, the US and Israel have unveiled a 20-point plan to end Israel’s war in Gaza. The plan promises closure but delivers ambiguity: a framework that could either mark the first steps toward peace, or yet another round of failed diplomacy.

The 7 October 2023 incursion by Palestinian Hamas militants into southern Israel prompted an unprecedented response by Israel, which has unleashed waves of attacks across Gaza over the past two years, killing thousands of Palestinian civilians alongside Hamas fighters. It has turned into the bloodiest confrontation in what has been an intractable Palestinian-Israeli conflict that has festered for nearly eight decades without resolution, with the regional spillover radically reshaping the Middle East’s geopolitical map.

Previous attempts to negotiate a lasting ceasefire to the Gaza war with US, Qatari and Egyptian mediation have failed. But there is a glimmer of hope that a new plan announced by US President Donald Trump on 29 September, even with its flaws and omissions, might bring about some relief. (CONTINUED - 1635 WORDS)