Last week, at the charming Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, US President Donald Trump gathered the most politically powerful and financially affluent regional and global leaders. However, the declaration signed there failed to address four interrelated challenges facing phase two of his 20-point plan: security, legitimacy, funding, and stability.
Security first
Various Gaza day-after plans, the most thorough and comprehensive of which was developed during former US president Joe Biden’s last year in office and subsequently turned over to the Trump team, specified that to provide security, a third-party force, now commonly dubbed the International Stabilization Force (ISF), should comprise some 35,000 troops.
Much work has been done regarding the specifics of its mandate, mode of operation, and deconfliction with the exiting IDF. Measures to reconcile Israel’s right of self-defense with the presence of armed troops from various countries have also been addressed.
Still, no firm commitments nor specified numbers have been secured from Arab, Muslim, and non-regional countries that have indicated intention to dispatch troops. Complicating matters further is the fact that potential contributors include states outside of US Central Command’s (CENTCOM) area of responsibility, meaning they have no experience in operational coordination with others that are in the region. Resolving all of these issues cannot be accomplished overnight.
Yet, until the ISF is deployed, Hamas will continue dominating the 50% of Gaza vacated by the IDF and will not be disarmed, Israel will not withdraw further, and friction between them – whether intentionally provoked or due to misunderstandings – might derail the entire process.
Under such conditions, time is not on the side of stability. On the one hand, the swift deployment to Israel’s south of a sizable CENTCOM team, tasked with overseeing phase one implementation and ceasefire coordination, has been most encouraging. Likewise, the visits this week of Vice President JD Vance and Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff indicate an effort to preserve momentum. On the other hand, the missed Sharm opportunity to advance donors’ preparations for Gaza security was regrettable.
Legitimacy
Potential regional contributors have long argued that they will only dispatch troops to Gaza once their involvement is not perceived as replacing one occupation (Israeli) with another. To be welcomed by Gazans, they argue, their deployment requires legitimacy. That, in their view, can only derive from a mandate to help, rather than replace, the Palestinian Authority until – once reformed and rejuvenated – it is able to govern Gaza on its own. Consequently, they have long insisted on being both invited by the PA and being fully coordinated with it from the outset.
To those Arab, Muslim, and other potential contributors, the involvement of the PA is deemed essential for another reason. It is to reflect their wish to see the eventual reintegration of Gaza and the West Bank in a single polity.
The Israeli veto over any PA involvement in the Gaza “day after” has already undergone some ‘refinements.’ Most noteworthy has been Jerusalem’s yielding repeatedly when it came to the presence of PA officers on the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing. That was the case when the passage was opened for some six weeks during the early 2025 ceasefire and is also what was agreed upon in the context of Trump’s 20-point plan (now delayed in response to Hamas’s failure to release the remains of deceased Israelis).
The presence of PA President Mahmoud Abbas at the Sharm summit also seemed to indicate a realization that a PA kosher stamp is required for Phase 2 to proceed. Still, the Sharm declaration (like the Trump speech to the Knesset) failed to demonstrate resolve to prevent an Israeli veto from derailing the process.
Funding
Estimates of Gaza reconstruction vary between $50 billion and $70 billion over a decade. Whereas several countries in the region and beyond have indicated their intention to contribute to the effort, the Sharm declaration failed to mention – let alone secure – any of it.
Stability
One concern common to all potential donors to Gaza rehabilitation is the prospect of their enormous financial investment going up in the flames of another Israeli-Palestinian round of violence.
Though no one can guarantee that it will not happen, disarming Hamas and demilitarizing Gaza would go a long way in reducing the chances of another conflagration. However, donors have rallied around another measure viewed as contributing to stability: a political horizon.
Entertaining no naive expectations of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict any time soon, nonetheless, they do call on Jerusalem to commit to what they have dubbed “a credible path toward a two-state solution.” Significantly, that very same expectation has long been presented by Saudi Arabia as what it would take to pave the way for normalization and for Israel’s regional integration.
Here too, with the current Israeli government vehemently opposed to Palestinian statehood, however over the horizon it may be, the absence of a firm message on the issue from the Trump Knesset speech and the Sharm declaration does not bode well for either Gaza’s rehabilitation or Saudi normalization.
What’s next?
One can hope that Trump will exhibit in Phase 2 the same energy and determination that transformed Phase 1 of his plan from a fantasy to a reality, in record time at that. Likewise, the same x-factor by which he got hostile countries and conflicting interests to unite in promoting the first phase will prove just as essential for the second.
A third test of his stamina would be in forcing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – a veteran of playing successive presidents – to stick with the plan that Trump forced him to accept, even though it was harder to swallow than previous ones that he either rejected or betrayed midway.
Consequently, as his team seeks to secure the various prerequisites for Phase 2, those discussed above and others, prospects of their success will rise and fall with the degree of President Trump’s engagement.
The writer served as policy adviser and special envoy to the late prime minister Shimon Peres. He is a fellow with the Israel Policy Forum and the Economic Cooperation Foundation and a member of the leadership of Commanders for Israel’s Security.