When news broke Friday afternoon that Hamas had finally responded to President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan to end the war in Gaza after almost five days, White House officials were so quick to accept the group’s statement that they shared it in its entirety on social media, at one point mistaking it for a statement from Trump.
Trump’s twenty points, including crucial ones like calling for Hamas to disarm and destroy its weapons and to have no further participation in running Gaza, were all but endorsed by Hamas in their answer.
However, Trump decided to highlight the agreements that Hamas did reach rather than the ones that it did not. He felt that the group’s announcement that it was prepared to free all of the captives still detained following the terror acts on October 7, 2023, was sufficient. Even if the specifics were still up in the air, Trump seemed prepared to move forward as though peace was finally on the horizon after months of excruciatingly sluggish progress.
Only about an hour after Hamas published its six-paragraph response, he issued his response, thus preventing Israel from responding, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom Trump and his team had urged to accept the peace plan earlier in the week.
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