The Duran Podcast - GAZA Phase One Agreement

Episode Date: October 9, 2025

GAZA Phase One Agreement

All right, Alexander, we have the agreement with the 20-point peace plan for Gaza. Israel and Hamas have agreed to phase one of the plan. So hostages will be released. Prisoners will be released. This is all going to happen during the weekend. And the Israeli military will move back to the position of what has been described as the yellow. line if you look at the various maps for the phase one deal. So this was announced by U.S. President Trump.

He announced it during a meeting that he was taking part in, as well as in a truth social post. And he may even be traveling to the Middle East on Sunday or Monday and oversee the execution, in the conclusion of phase one of the 20-point peace plan. And we move on to to what is going to be the difficult part to this plan, which is the phase, phase two. So what are your thoughts on this? You've described this exactly. This was the easy part. It was the part where Hamas, for example, would have no real problems. I mean, I think from Hamas's point of view, the advantages, the leverage for them of holding onto the hostages is completely exhausted and I think releasing them, which is,

by the way, a good thing in itself. I mean, it is absolutely long overdue that these poor, distressed people were finally let go of and that their families were finally able to reunite themselves with their loved ones. Anyway, from Hamas's point of view, there was no purpose and point in holding on to them any further. And Hamas is getting prisoners released from Israel, by Israel in return. And I think from Hamas's point of view, this works well. So does the Israeli withdrawal. I mean, Israel is not withdrawing from the entirety of Gaza, but it is pulling back. And Hamas itself has survived. I mean, it is still there. It is still in Gaza. So this is the easy part for Hamas to agree to,

and they have agreed to it. And it is interesting how, you know, they've somehow managed to divide this plan, and we have phase one and phase two, and all of the rest. From this point on, exactly, as you say, it becomes much, much more difficult, because what the 20-point plan envisages is a number of things. Firstly, Hamas itself disarming. The chances that Hamas will readily agree to that, I would say, are nil. I mean, an organization like Hamas does not disarm. And how do you force Hamas to disarm? It's very difficult to see how it's done. I mean, there's these tunnel networks, there's these warehouses, there's all sort of. of things, I understand that Hamas has been recruiting amongst the Palestinian population recently.

So in some respects, it's actually grown in size. Trying to get Hamas to disarm, I would have thought was all but impossible. And then beyond that, there is the question of the peacekeeping force, which is also part of the 20-point plan. And there is now disagreement about this. Egypt, interestingly, wants the United States to send peacekeepers to Gaza. And the reason Egypt wants them there, American peacekeepers, is that they will presumably feel that if the American military are there on the ground, that will prevent Israel from moving back in because Israel won't want to take on the U.S. military in that kind of way. I doubt that Hamas, however, will be happy about having US peacekeepers.

And then Israel will be concerned about which countries will send the peacekeepers into Gaza. And Hamas will also have its views about this. There's a massive argument to be had about deploying peacekeepers to Gaza. Where these people will come from? Will they come from the Arab and Muslim states? Indonesia is said to be keen. But so far, there's been no agreement about this. So there is still enormous uncertainty as to what is going to happen

and whether this plan can possibly work. And we're not close to getting the technocratic government of Gaza set up that people were talking about or the peace board the Trump is going to chair set up either. So from this point on, exactly as you say, it becomes much more difficult. But at least we have phase one, and at least the hostages are free, and at least other prisoners are also free. And there is a ceasefire and an Israeli pullback.

And that may not seem like very much, but to the people in Gaza, to the hostages, to their families, to the families of the prisoners, to the prisoners themselves, it's a very big thing. So phase two is going to be negotiated out next week? Is that how this is going to move? Well, in theory, yes. But this may take weeks or months. And I mean, what happens in the meantime?

Because this could be a long process. What happens in the meantime? Is there a ceasefire that stays in place? Is monitored by who's going to be monitoring? Well, exactly. All of these are non-onest. answered questions, but you're absolutely correct. In theory, there is going to be a ceasefire. But there are some people in Israel who are very unhappy, people within Netanyahu's government

who are very unhappy about this. They will be looking at every step taken by Hamas to slow walk issues like disarmament and things of that kind as a pretext to say that this entire process has failed and that the Israeli military needs to go back in. And then, of course, Hamas has its own hardliners to contend with. And there are even more militant groups in Gaza who are even, who have already spoken out and said clearly that they won't accept this plan. So there's a huge amount of things that could go wrong. If I was going to say what I thought would happen, I would say that probably it will go wrong.

and that this will be another temporary ceasefire, like the one that Witgolf and Trump were able to negotiate in the first weeks of Trump's presidency. If you remember, that collapsed after about a month. This might quite easily do the same. That's what my mind tells me is most likely to happen. But one can hope and one can hope that this will be the end, even though, frankly, the odds are against it. Does this clear the way for the Trump administration and Nenehahu to focus on Iran? Yes. I mean, that's the other side of it. I mean, I think that may very well be the deal that's been done in private between the Americans and the Israelis, that Trump has told Netanyahu, or the Americans have told Netanyahu, look, we are working our way up to another major clash with Iran, and all the indications are that that is coming. There's been huge deployments of fighter jets,

American fighter jets to the Middle East. There's American in-flight refueling tank has been deployed to the Middle East as well. Apparently more missiles, air defense missiles, have been rushed to Israel. and what the Americans may be telling Netanyahu and may be telling other people in Israel is, look, we're preparing, we're cranking up for a battle with Iran, a big battle with Iran. We can't afford to have this ongoing crisis in Gaza. It is draining away support in the Arab world. It is causing us massive problems internationally. And beyond that, it is involving you in a two front wall, one against a mass in Gaza, one potentially against Iran, and as we've seen, your resources don't stretch that far.

So I have to say that is the other dark side of this picture. Yes, we could be seeing a kind of fragile peace come to Gaza, but it's entirely possible that this is preparatory to another. strike on Iran. Yeah, I'm just thinking that perhaps the Trump administration is buying into the narrative that the way you solve whatever is happening in the Middle East, including Gaza and the issue of a Palestinian state, a two-state solution, and all of these things is to go after the head of the snake, as they always say, as Netanyahu says, or many of the neocons say, and that's Iran. I mean, they've kind of maneuvered themselves into a position where they believe that Iran going after Iran will be the solution to everything that plagues us in the Middle East. There are many, many people in the United States who believe this. In fact, I would say that

for the American foreign policy establishment, that is the conventional wisdom. That is all the fault of Iran and the problems ultimately come back to Iran. And if we can take Iran out of contention, then everything else in the Middle East will immediately and quickly sort itself out. I think that is completely illusory. I don't believe, for example, that Hamas is in any way directly plugged into or connected or controlled by Iran. I mean, Iran and Hamas were fighting on different sides in the Syrian Civil War, for example,

which is, you know, an inconvenient truth that nobody in the West ever. seems to want to address. But, you know, that belief does exist. So it is a narrative that is partly invented, but also strongly believed in. And there is this enormous hostility in the United States, which goes beyond the neocons to Iran. And, well, I think that most of the MAGA base in the United States will oppose an all-out war between the United States and Iran. And if the war doesn't go well, that could cause Trump significant political problems going forward. But I think that Trump, I fear, and I didn't know, but I fear that Trump has been listening again to all of those people around him. I noticed that, for example, he recently.

recently had a meeting, a briefing in which he was addressed about the issue of Ukraine by General Kellogg. But Mike Walz was also there, he's former National Security Advisor, who is now U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. But Mike Walsh is known to be a fierce hawk on Iran, somebody who absolutely wants to see the collapse of the regime in Iran and who is a forbid supporter of Israel. We've discussed this in many programs and we've discussed many aspects of Waltz's short-lived career as national security advisor. But Trump appears to be listening to him again. So all of these people are going to be

telling to Trump, look, we didn't go far enough in June. We hit the Iranians, but we weren't fully prepared for this. This time, what we need to do is to go all out. The regime is fragile. It will collapse like a house of cards. And when it does, we've got the person who's ready to take over, Pachlavi, the son of the former Shah, he's going to come back, the Iranian people will welcome him, there'll be freedom and democracy and peace, and we will have a friendly Iran, and all our problems in the Middle East will be solved. And I'm afraid Trump. as we've discussed in many places, is very, very vulnerable to this kind of talk, because it's the sort of thing that part of him wants to hear.

He looks for quick and easy solutions and easy victories. And if he comes to believe that a victory over Iran is going to be easy, he might go for it, saying to him, Well, if there's some discomfort for two weeks from his political base, well, he doesn't need to worry because at the end of that two weeks after the regime has collapsed, he will be the winner and he will get the peace at the Middle East, which is what he wants. Well, he's got some political capital that I guess he could say he's won by executing phase one of the 20-point peace plan.

So maybe this has given him some political capital as the peace president. He can now say that, look, I've actually gotten phase one done, and now we're working on phase two. But as we're working on phase two, we also have to deal with our big problem in the Middle East, the way he may be seeing it, which is Iran. And so it kind of becomes a type of package deal, like a package solution in that you're negotiating phase two. or you're saying that you're negotiating phase two, but in order to get phase two done, you know, you've got this underlying problem, which for them is Iran. So phase two can't really be fully complete or the full completion of the 20-point peace plan can happen until you deal with Iran.

That might be how they're positioning. Well, exactly. I mean, I'm simplifying it, but that might be how they're positioning the story. I mean, can I just say... The strategy of this. Can I just say that when I looked at the White House website a few hours ago, there was a huge thing there about the President of Peace. So it's exactly what you said, that they are currently on the strength of this,

projecting Trump as the President of Peace. And bear in mind that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee is due to meet in a few days. So it might very well be that there's partly part of the agenda too. But anyway, I think you've got it exactly. If Hamas digs in its heels about disarmament or something of that kind, you can immediately see what they're going to say. They're going to say, well, Hamas is taking this hard line because he's being encouraged to do so by Iran.

So in order to fully bring peace to Gaza and to the rest of the Middle East, we need to go after the head of the snake, which is the regime of the island. Ayatollahs in Iran, and so we attack Iran. And you can very easily see how that narrative might start to surface and how it could very easily be believed in. Bear in mind that Trump himself has made it clear many times that he is very antagonistic to Iran and to the regime, to the government there and to the regime there. I mean, he really, really does.

like them. So it's given he's already existing feelings about them, it's probably not going to be very difficult to persuade him that all of the problems in the Middle East, including the difficulty of getting a piece sorted out in Gaza, are ultimately down to Iran. Okay, so yeah, we'll end the video there. The main point is that the phase two of the peace plan is going to be the difficult part now. So we're going to monitor what happened going forward, right? Absolutely. Well, we are.

We have to. But as I said, I mean, having said that, I mean, let's not be totally negative or pessimistic about this. People are going to be free who up to now have not been. And that is a good thing. That is a good thing. And people shouldn't overlook that. Yeah, absolutely.

All right, we will end the video there. The durand.com. We are on X and Telegram and Rumble and go to Duran Shop pickups of merch like what we are wearing in this video update. There is a link in the description box down below. Take care.