Israel And Hamas Agree To First Phase Of Peace Deal
00:00On the ThruLine podcast from NPR, immigration enforcement might be more visible now,but this moment didn't begin with President Trump's second inauguration, or even his first.A series from ThruLine about how immigration became political and a cash cow.Listen to ThruLine in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.Hi, this is Mariko and Alex on the oyster beds at Dosuwallup State Park in Washington State.Where we just finished harvesting our daily allotment of three dozen oysters, and now the tide is coming in quick.This podcast was recorded at 1.36 p.m. on Thursday, October 9th, 2025.Things may have changed by the time you hear it.
00:44Okay, here's the show.Our listeners go to some really cool places.Every day this week, we've had amazing timestamps from amazing places.That we aren't at, you know, we're here in Washington, D.C., people are.are out there eating oysters or shucking oysters. What is the word? Shucking oysters. Harvesting. Harvesting. Harvesting. Harvesting, then shucking. Okay. You suck them after you harvest. Yeah. All right. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Greg Miree. I cover national security. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.And today on the podcast, Israel and Hamas have agreed to the first stage of a ceasefire that could end the war in Gaza. So, Greg, you're talking to us from Tel Aviv. And there are a lot of moving parts about this.deal. Can you just explain them for us? Yeah, the Israeli government is discussing this. Now, they'resupposed to approve it. There's a majority. There's some against it in the cabinet. But when it gets
01:42to prove, then there's supposed to be a formal announcement, which means the ceasefire willtake effect. And then the clock starts ticking for both the Israelis and for Hamas in Gaza.Israel will have 24 hours, so perhaps from Thursday night to Friday night, to pull back its troopssomewhat in Gaza. Not all the way. In fact, they'll still have about half of Gaza, sort of following thecontours of Gaza's borders, and will over time move further back if things go well. Now, theclock will also be ticking for Habas, which has supposedly three days to release all the Israelihostages. 20 of them are believed to be living. 28 are believed to be dead at this point. So we'reexpecting them to at least start getting released over the weekend. Perhaps Sunday we're hearing.
02:32President Trump spoke recently. He talked about Monday or Tuesday, but sometime in this time period,we should see the Israeli hostages come out. When that starts, Israel will begin releasingup to 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees. And there's more. Hundreds of aid trucksare supposed to start flowing into Gaza to deal with this critical humanitarian shortage.that has carried on throughout the war. So we've got all of these moving parts. It will be verypositive if they all happen as expected, but certainly there's the possibility some things couldget delayed or even go wrong. Right. So lots to watch in the next couple of days. Tam, I knowPresident Trump had a pretty big role in making this potential peace deal happen. Can you explain his
03:18role? Absolutely. He has been pushing for this for a long time, but it really ramped uparound the time of the UN General Assembly last month in New York, where he held a meeting witha number of Arab leaders. He also has been applying intense pressure to Israeli Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu also visited the White House last month. Trump met with him.He specifically said that he did not think Israel should be allowed to occupy Gaza in a lot ofways, you know, if there's a good cop, bad cop, he played the bad cop with Netanyahu reallypushing him to make this deal happen. And now the president is taking a huge amount of credit.He had this cabinet meeting today where members of his cabinet went around praising him. And there
04:12was a lot of praise for this deal. Oh, well, yeah, let's listen to a little bit of PresidentTrump talking about the deal today. Last night, we reached a momentous breakthrough in theMiddle East, something that people said was never going to be done. We ended the war in Gazaand really, on a much bigger basis, created peace. And I think it's going to be a lastingpeace, hopefully an everlasting peace. Peace in the Middle East. Well, Greg, obviously this isjust step one, as you mentioned in a multi-pronged process. And peace in the Middle East is notsomething that just happens with a snap of a finger. Can you explain the hurdles, I guess,as you look ahead to the next few days and weeks to kind of potential difficult points that could
04:53still put this deal at risk. Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of them. There is probably a pretty goodchance now that this initial stage, the shooting stops, the ceasefire takes hold, the Israelihostages are released, the Palestinian prisoners and detainees are released. Both societiesreally, really want this. So there is momentum and interest in seeing that done. ButThen you start to hit some things that are trickier and harder. First, the Trump plan calls for Hamas todisarm and not play a role in governing Gaza. Now, Hamas hasn't said it will do that. It's beenin Gaza for 40 years. It's ruled the territory for nearly 20 years. And Hamas is not committed tothis really key point from the Israeli perspective. Second, the Israeli troops are still in Gaza. They're
05:45supposed to pull back, as I noted. But guys are a small cramped place, and just having Israeli troopsinside that territory really increases the possibility of a confrontation. And there is no timelinefor when they will leave. So if things start to go wrong, they could escalate very, very quickly.I will say that President Trump was asked, okay, this is phase one. What about phase two?And he's like, I don't want to talk about that. But yeah, it'll include disarming. It will include, you know,I've got a 20-point plan, which he does have a 20-point plan. It's just that the parties having to actuallyagreed to everything in that 20-point plan. It includes the potential down the line for a two-statesolution where the Palestinians would have self-governance. And it would create a board of peace,
06:35which would be chaired by President Trump. It would basically be an international body meant to transition from this warstate to a stable Gaza. There are just a lot of things in the 20-point plan that it isn't clearhave fully been agreed to yet. But one thing that Trump pointed out, and I think this is probablyimportant, is he says, we're getting all the hostages out at the beginning. You know, this isn'tlike a few hostages here, a few hostages there, as has been in the past. He's really emphasizingthat all of the hostages will be released at the beginning of this ceasefire. Greg, I did want toto ask you, because there has been a ceasefire before, there have been some fits and starts,there was one back in January that looked like it had potential. Is this time different?
07:27It is different, but that doesn't mean it's going to work. What is different is that there's a lotmore pressure being exerted. You mentioned the pressure that Trump had put on Netanyahuin getting Netanyahu to accept the plan publicly. And then they started to put thesqueeze on Hamas, saying Hamas had to accept this. And Arab countries really wanted to seethis deal done. Egypt and Qatar, the two countries that work most closely with Hamas, bothclearly wanted this done. They were participants in the negotiations in Egypt the past severaldays. So that had a big impact as well. They weren't going to let Hamas come up with all sortsof reasons or negotiate endlessly. Hamas was also beaten down. The Israeli troops,
08:15have just worn them down and really flattened Hamas over the past two years. And above and beyond that,of course, we've seen this incredible punishment inflicted on civilians in Gaza, where more than67,000 people have been killed overall, many of them women and children. And Israeli troops weremounting another offensive pushing into Gaza City, the main city in the territory. So there wasthis real sense of exhaustion, certainly among the Palestinian public in Hamas, but Israelisthese two wanted this. It just seemed there was momentum coming from lots of different places sayingwe really want this to happen now. And again, it's not just a ceasefire. It's supposed to bepart of a larger plan ending the war, looking forward toward reconstruction. Well, Greg, talk about
09:02that exhaustion again for a second. Have you seen that play out like in the form of reliefnow? I mean, in terms of in Israel and Gaza, have you been hearing it all reaction to thefirst day of this deal potentially being done. Yeah, Miles, people were just talking about the senseof relief, the sense of hope, joy. We saw people celebrating in both places, in Gaza and in Israel.So there's that, but also the emotions are still very, very raw for a lot of people. We spoke to aPalestinian father down in Gaza, and he said, what should I be happy about? I'm living in a tent with mychildren. We don't have enough food. We don't have clean water. I've lost 150 of my extended familymembers in the war. We talked to an Israeli man. His father was one of those held hostage in Gaza.
09:55He survived for quite some time, but then died in captivity. This man really blamed Israeli Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu saying that deal could have been reached a long time ago when my father was stillalive. So he's very critical of Netanyahu, but very supportive of Trump. He credits Trumpwith doing this deal. So you've got a lot of very strong conflicting emotions coursing throughthis place on both the Israeli and Palestinian side right now. Yeah, I want to dig into all of thata little bit more. Let's take a quick break and more in just a moment. And we're back. And we've beendiscussing the latest developments for the peace deal that could end the war in Gaza. And Greg, I do want totalk a little bit about the future of Gaza. What do we know about over the coming days and weeks and
10:42months who is actually going to run Gaza? Yeah, we've been asking that question since the war beganbecause there was no real clear answer. So the plan that's been outlined by Trump andendorsed by Israel calls for this committee of Palestinian technocrats to temporarily run the place.We don't know who they're going to be, who's going to select them, how it will work.And Hamas is still going to be there. It's not like they're just going to disappear. And again, as Tam mentioned, there would it be this Board of Peace overseeing it? So it's a really kind of stitched together notion with no real substance to it at this point. So we'll have to see how this will play out, how members of this body will do things, how they will handle enforcement if they're still armed Hamas members there, how will they deal with it. And again, this is just an interim solution. You'll still have to find alonger-term solution. You know, one other possibility is the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank,which used to run the West Bank and Gaza, but they are in very low repute. They're seen ascorrupt and inept. The head of it is Mahmoud Abbas, who turns 90 years old next month. Netanyahu
11:53says they're not qualified to run it. So that doesn't seem to be a strong option. So there's noreal clear group that has a strong political base or any track record who will be doing this,Again, that's one of the problems down the road.Yeah, I'm looking at the 20-point plan that President Trump put out late last month.And the Board of Peace is described as a body that will set the framework and handle the funding for the redevelopment of Gaza until such time as the Palestinian Authority has completed its reform program and is able to take control.And President Trump in this cabinet meeting talked about rebuilding Gaza and said, there's all these really wealthy Arab nations around.They can pay for it.And I feel like it's a very vague timeline.
12:41I mean, that could be weeks, months, years.Greg, how long are we talking here?Yeah.And, you know, Trump has this history.He likes to declare victory and then generally move on.He's not a detail guy.And yet, as we know, sorting out these Israeli-Palestinian issues is absolutely.time-consuming and torturous and one step forward, two steps backward. So these problems are
13:07going to come up. And Trump has sort of taken ownership by naming himself ahead of this board.You know, he likes the notion that he's brought peace to the region, or at least ended the war,apparently. But we'll have to see how willing he is to get involved when you run into theseproblems as to who's going to run Gaza, who's going to patrol the streets, who hasthe enforcement power. Well, it's interesting. I feel like you guys have both mentioned the factthat the president is quick to declare a win. But in this case, it does feel like much of therest of the world seems to agree that he did play a pretty big role in this. I mean, what is everyoneelse saying about his role in these negotiations? Yeah, he did play a big role. And I think he was
13:52instrumental, and he should be given credit for this. And I think he helped bring this internationaleffort together. I think the Europeans were on board. There was this pressure that came from theArab states as well, and that's something we hadn't really seen in the past. And so he absolutelydeserved some credit for that. And really, to the larger issue, Trump has had some real success in theMiddle East, and a lot of people doubted him. But in his first term, he helped work out theAbraham Accords, which were brokered by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, where Israel established relations withcountries like the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Now, a lot of people are very skeptical of that,but they've been stressed tested by this war the past two years, and they've held up. And lo and behold,
14:39Trump sent Jared Kushner to the talks yesterday in Egypt, and he was there when this ceasefire deal wasreached. So very untraditional, not how it wouldnormally be done diplomatically, but it has it has worked. You know, the interesting thing aboutTrump is that he is very pro-Israel. He moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem during his first term.He got these Abraham Accords through. And in part, I think that gave him the ability to be tougherwith Netanyahu. Like, President Biden also very pro-Israel, but ultimately didn't really forforce Netanyahu's hand. And Trump, on the other hand, used his political capital to try to push thisthrough. The thing is, he promised he'd have peace. It didn't happen. And so this is one of his big
15:33unfinished promises. And now he is very close to keeping that promise. It has been interestingto watch him be tougher on Netanyahu than other U.S. presidents have been in the past.You know, seeing this through the lens of this being a potentially massive accomplishment for the president coming at the same time that his approval ratings domestically are at an all time low, at least for the second term, how much is this going to matter, I guess, to voters, Tam, do you think? I mean, is this something that could potentially move that approval in a meaningful way?Generally speaking, unless foreign policy is going very badly, it doesn't actually drag down a president's approval because the reality is for most Americans.It's pocketbook issues. It's what's happening at home. It's how they feel about their lives and not so much about what's happening on the global stage. But for Trump, it is a win. And it's a win at a moment when the government is shut down, when his approval rating is at its low point. And so for him, why not drop everything and fly to the Middle East? Because, hey, let's take the W.Craig, what else are you going to be watching over the next week? Well, we've got so many things happening.miles. Obviously, the exchange of hostages and prisoners, a Trump visit, aid going into Gaza,and just seeing with all of these different dynamics, if the ceasefire looks to be taking hold
17:01and can stabilize the region. You know, you have the long-term issue of solving the Palestinianpolitical problem and the Palestinians desire to have their own state. But that's just somethingthat's way over the horizon at this point.You know, can you stabilize Gaza at this point?That's a big deal.And just the way the Middle East has been changed pretty dramatically in the past two years,Israel has really beaten back its main foes.Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon.
17:31They've hammered the Iranian nuclear sites.And the longtime dictator of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, is gone.So Israel has really strengthened its position in terms of security.but is much more isolated because of the way it has handled the war in Gaza.All right. Well, we can leave it there for today. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting.I'm Greg Myrie. I cover national security.And I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.
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