Weeks have turned into months, and progress on President Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza appears to have stalled. Frenetic negotiations alongside the U.N. General Assembly achieved historic buy-in from Muslim-majority nations in September, resulting in the return of all the remaining living hostages in October. But another month has passed, and those peace deal partners seem no closer to disarming and replacing Hamas’s government in Gaza.

Leaked government documents suggest this lack of progress is due to the most obvious reason: no one is sure what to do next. “Divorced from the peace deal is a plan of how to actually implement this peace deal,” argued one participant at a two-day symposium at the newly established “Civil-Military Coordination Center,” which the U.S. created in southern Israel to manage the peace deal. “Everyone is floating around at 40,000 feet, and nobody is talking operations or tactics.”

The D.C.-based Politico first obtained a trove of documents from the symposium, including “situation reports” on Gaza, PowerPoint slides, and advisory documents from participating think tanks.

One PowerPoint slide, whose contents Politico recreated, asked the five-billion-dollar question in its title: “How to transition from Phase 1 to Phase 2?” Underneath this admission of ignorance, the slide featured two columns:

“Phase 1

• “Cessation of military operations
• “IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] withdrawal [to the] yellow line
• “Hostage return
• “Prisoner release
• “Humanitarian surge
• “ISF [International Stabilization Force]”

And:

“Phase 2

• “Hamas disarmament
• “IDF withdrawal (perimeter)
• “Transitional Palestinian governance
• “Oversight by Board of Peace
• “PA [Palestinian Authority] reform
• “Economic development”

Thus far, Phase 1 is nearly complete. Only the return of four Israeli hostage bodies and the creation of an ISF remain outstanding. Israel has signed off on an international force led by Indonesia and Azerbaijan, but Indonesia’s insistence on U.N. approval of the force has introduced further obstacles.

However, the objectives ambitiously collected under the single heading “Phase 2” (which would more realistically span multiple phases) so far remain remote aspirations. No one seems to have a plan to move from Phase 1 to Phase 2. The slide itself implied as much, connecting the two columns with an arrow, labelled with a question mark.

The central obstacle is Hamas. All further progress is contingent upon Hamas disarming and relinquishing its control of Gaza, which Hamas has consistently refused to do.

According to an October 20 “Gaza Situation Report,” issued by the U.K.-based Blair Institute and disseminated at the symposium, “Hamas [is] reasserting authority and filling the security vacuum through coercive enforcement, policing.” The report estimated that Hamas had redeployed 7,000 “security personnel” throughout the 47% of the Gaza Strip not controlled by Israel, reasserting its control over 95% of Gaza’s population.

Hamas’s resurgence complicates not only the peaceful administration of Gaza, but even something as basic as the import of humanitarian aid. Only 600 trucks per day are reaching the area due to “major bottlenecks.”

Politico obtained another document titled “Threats to Humanitarian and Security Operations in Hamas-Free Zones in Gaza,” which “appears to be from the U.S. government,” they assessed. According to that document, “Hamas is buying time for eventual reassertion of control. Every delay works in their favor.” Such delay appears to be the new status quo.

After high-profile American fumbles in Afghanistan and Iraq this century, American strategists have learned never to commit themselves to an area without a clear game plan and an exit strategy. The peace plan for Gaza appears to have neither.

Yet, at the same time, the Trump administration is willing and eager to entangle itself in Gaza’s future affairs. “One organizational chart, included in the documents,” which Politico obtained, “details plans for significant U.S. involvement in Gaza even beyond security matters, including overseeing economic reconstruction,” the outlet said.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins provided a note of historical clarity to the situation, as an outside observer who has closely followed Israel’s fortunes for decades. “The idea that peace can be obtained in exchange for dividing up the land has not only proven ineffective, on October 7, 2023, it proved to be a deadly calculation,” he told The Washington Stand. “American policy should not support or encourage the division of the land of Israel.”

“Despite the earlier celebrations of and the claims of ‘the historic dawn of a new Middle East,’” Perkins predicted, “the continued presence of an armed Hamas in Gaza, and an emboldened Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria with the resuscitation of the so-called ‘Two-State Solution,’ suggests that peace is going to be tenuous at best.”