In the Media

The Australian – 10 October 2025

Finally, very welcome news. The end of the Gaza war is now a distinct possibility, with the signing of the deal to implement the first phase of Donald Trump’s 20-point plan. The remaining Israeli hostages, held by Hamas for two years in inhumane conditions including starvation and torture, are to be released, in exchange for almost 2000 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, including 250 terrorists serving life sentences for murder. Israel will withdraw to an agreed-upon line in Gaza.

That said, there is much left to be negotiated and enforced. The plan rightly calls for Hamas to be completely disarmed, its military infrastructure destroyed, and for it to leave and have no future role in Gaza, echoing calls from much of the international community, including the Arab League. However, Hamas is demanding involvement in discussions to determine Gaza’s future, and says it will surrender its “offensive” weapons, but insists on retaining its “defensive” weapons.

The plan requires an International Stabilisation Force to keep order in Gaza, mainly comprised of forces from Arab countries. It’s hard to imagine this force entering Gaza, other than areas controlled by Israel, if Hamas retains its arms and therefore its capacity to wreak bloodshed. And without stabilisation, it will be impossible to achieve reconstruction, or to ensure aid reaches those who need it.

Other process aspects will need settling, such as when Israel is to withdraw and to where, who serves on the transitional technocratic government intended to administer Gaza, how Hamas’s disarmament is to be verified and, down the track, when the corrupt, incompetent Palestinian Authority, which incites hatred and financially incentivises terror, will be sufficiently reformed to assume any governance role in Gaza.

Let’s make no mistake, Hamas is a fundamentalist genocidal terror organisation whose reason for existing is to destroy Israel. As such, it will not willingly agree to measures that end its ability to attack the Jewish state. It no doubt intends to use any imminent peace to settle accounts with those Gazans it feels supported Israel and, in the longer term, to re-establish itself as a fighting force, rebuild its military infrastructure including its tunnels, and ultimately resume some control of Gaza and attacking Israel. Therefore, it is vital that the international community remain absolutely steadfast in ensuring the entire Trump plan is implemented.

Hamas had two main aims in carrying out its October 7 atrocities. One was to terrorise and traumatise Israelis so severely that they no longer saw a future in the Jewish state. The other was to exploit the casualties that would inevitably occur in Gaza, especially given Hamas’s willingness to sacrifice its civilians as human shields, to damage Israel’s standing internationally.

While it failed in its first aim, it was all too successful in its second, aided by disgraceful behaviour by the UN and its agencies, and various other supposedly reputable NGOs. For example, a UN special commission, set up by the UN Human Rights Council, and made up of three veteran anti-Israel activists, determined Israel was guilty of genocide. Given the Human Rights Council condemns Israel more than every other country combined, this was hardly surprising.

To reach this conclusion, they disregarded the fact that Israel was fighting a terrorist group that was a genuine military threat, that Hamas, mostly fighting out of uniform, was using human shield tactics, and that Hamas commits the war crime of using any and all Gaza buildings for military purposes. They and others accusing Israel of genocide also ignore the Israeli measures to avoid civilian casualties, such as evacuations and warnings, and that Israel has achieved a better ratio of combatants killed as against civilians than in other urban wars that no one would consider labelling as genocide.

Meanwhile, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a UN agency that measures food insecurity, determined there was a famine in Gaza City – by accepting various Hamas claims as truth, and changing the measurements and criteria it uses.

The UN accuses Israel of deliberately causing starvation. To do so, it greatly exaggerated the amount of food that entered Gaza before the war, greatly undercounted the amount entering during the war, and ignored and denied Hamas’s large-scale theft of food and the UN’s own failures to deliver much of the aid available.

Much of the world’s media has also been appalling, treating propaganda from Gaza authorities such as its ministry of health – really just an arm of Hamas – as truthful, and discounting the Israeli perspective. Israel is constantly accused of bombing hospitals, schools and mosques, while Hamas’s illegal military use of these is ignored or dismissed, to give just one example.

Of course, we have also seen, across the Western world, mass anti-Israel protests and an abhorrent surge in anti-Semitism, and governments including our own rewarding Hamas by issuing repeated one-sided condemnations of Israel and prematurely, counter-productively recognising a Palestinian state.

Hamas has naturally drawn great encouragement to continue fighting from all this anti-Israel activity and, if such activity continues, Hamas will draw similar encouragement for intransigence in relation to the rest of the plan. It will refuse to implement its terms to dismantle it as a military and political force, confident international pushback will hamstring Israeli attempts to enforce it.

Allowing Hamas to recover from the war is a recipe only for further violence and devastation, especially for Gaza. The international community must now do all it can to ensure every point of the Trump plan is implemented, including directing its opprobrium where it is warranted – at Hamas. This is the only way to achieve the lasting peace and reconciliation all people of goodwill crave.

Dr Colin Rubenstein AM is executive director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council.