By Ting Lian
By late 2025, the Gaza Strip had witnessed more than two years of a devastating war, punctuated by a fragile ceasefire that took effect on October 10, 2025. The conflict—triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, and Israel’s subsequent military campaign in Gaza—had killed thousands of Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The United States, under the Trump administration, positioned itself as the architect of the ceasefire and a proposed “20-point plan” for Gaza’s future. Yet the American stance remained deeply contested, characterized by massive military support for Israel, diplomatic protection at the United Nations, and a rhetorical commitment to humanitarian relief that critics argue was undermined by Washington’s own policies.
The current ceasefire emerged from the U.S.-brokered framework announced by Trump in late September 2025. The plan envisioned a multi-phase process: an initial halt to hostilities and hostage-prisoner exchanges, followed by Hamas’s disarmament, the deployment of an International Stabilization Force, a full Israeli withdrawal, and the establishment of a “technocratic” Palestinian committee to govern Gaza temporarily. A “Board of Peace,” to be led by Trump, would oversee the process.
On October 13, 2025, Trump traveled to Israel and Egypt, where he and regional leaders signed a declaration meant to cement the ceasefire. “This is a tremendous day for the world, it’s a tremendous day for the Middle East,” Trump said in Sharm el-Sheikh. “At long last, we have peace in the Middle East” . The declaration was notably vague on the ultimate political horizon, making no mention of a one-state or two-state solution. “We’re talking about rebuilding Gaza. I’m not talking about single state or double state or two state,” Trump told reporters.
By late December 2025, the ceasefire remained in its first phase, with the second phase—requiring Hamas’s disarmament, reconstruction, and new governance arrangements—yet to be finalized. After meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago on December 29, Trump issued a stark warning to Hamas. “They’re going to be given a very short period of time to disarm,” Trump said. “If they don’t disarm as they agreed to do … then there will be hell to pay for them.”
Trump also claimed that Israel had “lived up to the plan 100 percent,” a characterization that drew scrutiny given ongoing reports of Israeli violations. Gaza health authorities reported that hundreds of Palestinians had been killed and wounded since the ceasefire began on October 10. Trump acknowledged differences with Netanyahu on settler violence in the occupied West Bank, saying, “I wouldn’t say we agree on the West Bank 100 percent.”
Despite the ceasefire, the United States continued to deepen its military support for Israel. In late December 2025, the Pentagon announced an $8.6 billion contract with Boeing for the sale of 25 F-15IA fighter jets to Israel, with an option for 25 more. The contract covered design, production, testing, and delivery, with final delivery expected by the end of 2035.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the deal. “At a time when human rights organizations around the world are condemning the Israeli government’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people, the Pentagon’s decision to funnel billions of American taxpayer dollars and advanced weaponry to the Israeli military is morally indefensible,” said CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell. “It is a reward for genocide, paid for by American taxpayers.”
This military support did not go unchallenged in Congress. Earlier in July 2025, Senator Bernie Sanders forced votes on resolutions to block a $675 million sale of bombs and 20,000 automatic assault rifles to Israel. The resolutions failed, but 27 Democrats—more than half the Democratic caucus—voted for the assault-rifle measure, and 24 voted for the bomb measure. These were the highest levels of Democratic opposition to arms sales to Israel to date . “The Democrats are responding to a large majority of the American people who are fed up with spending billions upon billions of dollars on an Israeli government that is currently starving children to death,” Sanders said .
The humanitarian situation in Gaza remained catastrophic throughout the ceasefire. The U.S. supported a controversial aid-distribution mechanism, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which critics argued was controlled by Israel and had become a “death trap” for civilians seeking food. Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of UNRWA, stated that the GHF “provides nothing but starvation and gunfire to the people of Gaza.”.
During a State Department briefing that same month, spokesman Ted Pigott rejected characterizations of Israel weaponizing aid. “The only entity that has been weaponizing aid has been Hamas, through the looting of aid,” he said, defending the GHF as an effort “to get 90 million meals into Gaza during a war zone.” When pressed on whether the U.S. assessed the situation as famine, Pigott said, “We are acutely aware of the humanitarian disaster that is there,” but declined to offer a specific assessment.
By December, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was calling for increased aid flow. “We want to continue to see the flow of aid increase into those parts of Gaza that are still under Hamas control,” Rubio told reporters, emphasizing the need to complete phase one to transition to phase two. Yet reports continued to indicate severe shortages of food and medicine, with the UN estimating reconstruction costs at approximately $70 billion.
Lazzarini would later step down in March 2026 after nearly 400 UNRWA staff were killed in Gaza—unprecedented in UN history. In his exit interview, he described his feelings as “bitterness, but also sadness and also some pride. Bitterness, because I have been at the forefront over the last two years of extraordinary breaches of international law, witnessing atrocities, attacks against the United Nations”.
The United States found itself increasingly isolated at the United Nations over its support for Israel. On December 12, 2025, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution demanding that Israel allow full humanitarian access to Gaza, respect UN premises, and comply with the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion on its obligations as an occupying power. The resolution passed 139–12, with 19 abstentions. The U.S. voted against it.
U.S. envoy Jeff Bartos rejected the measure before the vote, arguing that it “exemplifies how even following President Trump’s landmark peace agreement and the historic passage of Security Council resolution 2803, the General Assembly continues its decades-long pattern of unfairly targeting Israel.” He added: “This performative text only shows division and impedes peace.”
Earlier, on December 2nd, the General Assembly adopted a resolution titled “Peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine” by a vote of 151–11, with the U.S. and Israel among the dissenters. The resolution demanded that Israel end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, cease all settlement activities, and evacuate settlers.
Despite the public display of unity between Trump and Netanyahu, reporting in late December revealed growing frustration within Trump’s inner circle with the Israeli prime minister. According to Axios, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Rubio, Jared Kushner, envoy Steve Witkoff, and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles had become “increasingly frustrated” by what they saw as Netanyahu’s attempts to “slow-walk” the ceasefire and undermine the peace process. A White House official indicated that Netanyahu had essentially “lost” the backing of Trump’s core team, though the president himself remained the only key supporter.
Analysts cautioned that the contradictions in U.S. policy—simultaneously arming Israel, brokering a ceasefire, and calling for humanitarian relief—might ultimately undermine the very peace Washington claimed to seek. Sujata Ashwarya of Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi noted that the U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran “deepen the strategic contradiction at the heart of Washington’s regional policy” because it is “far harder to sustain credible Gaza diplomacy while widening a direct regional war.”
The Israel-Hamas conflict remained unresolved beneath the surface of a fragile ceasefire. The United States positioned itself as both the principal mediator and Israel’s foremost military backer, a dual role that critics argued was inherently contradictory. Trump’s warnings to Hamas and his celebration of “peace” coexisted with an $8.6 billion fighter-jet deal, a UN voting record that isolated Washington from the global majority, and a humanitarian crisis that persisted despite American claims of progress. Whether the ceasefire could transition into a durable political settlement—or whether it would collapse under the weight of these contradictions—remained the central question as 2027 skirts the horizon.