Key parts of the peace plan still haven't been agreed to, including a requirement that Hamas disarm, the timing and extent of an Israeli troop withdrawal from Gaza, and the creation of an international body to run the territory after Hamas steps down.
Trump's Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, arrived Wednesday at Sharm el-Sheikh for the discussions, as did Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s top adviser, Ron Dermer.
Representatives from fringe militant groups, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or PFLP, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad — which holds an unknown number of Israeli hostages — are scheduled to arrive later Wednesday, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak to the media. Their attendance underscores the aim of the talks to encompass all Palestinian groups.
As Qatari, Egyptian and U.S. mediators met with both sides in preliminary talks on Wednesday morning, a senior Hamas official, Taher Nounou, said the group has provided a list of Palestinian prisoners it wants released from Israel in return for hostages in Gaza as part of the deal.
Separately, foreign ministers from European and Arab countries will converge on Paris on Thursday for a meeting on the future of Gaza to signal their support for Trump’s peace plan. Officials from France, the U.K., Germany, Italy, Spain, the European Union, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Indonesia, Canada and Turkey are expected to take part.
The meeting will focus on the potential deployment of an international stabilization force, Gaza’s post-war governance, Hamas’ disarmament and humanitarian aid and reconstruction, officials said on condition of anonymity because they couldn’t publicly disclose details of the meeting.
But Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar criticized the French initiative as being “concocted behind Israel’s back at the sensitive timing of the negotiations in Sharm el-Sheikh.” Sa’ar said that he hopes the initiative won’t “undermine the critical negotiations for the release of hostages, as it already happened in the past.”
Trump’s peace plan
The plan calls for an immediate ceasefire and release of the 48 hostages that the Hamas terrorists in Gaza still hold from their massacre of more than 1200 Israeli men, women and children on Oct. 7, 2023.
