Donald Trump claims it’s the route to ‘eternal peace’ and ‘potentially a great day for civilisation’.

He has always been committed to accurately representing his projects, so it’s unsurprising that his Middle East peace plan, which has received varying levels of support from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and major Arab nations in the region, was presented with considerable enthusiasm.

It’s certainly ambitious. It’s encouraging to have a President in the Oval Office keener to follow the path of the peacemaker than the warmonger. And in this latest venture to bring an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Trump is Peacemaker-in-Chief. He really does want that Nobel prize.

But his 20-point peace plan requires, up-front, a very stiff condition: that Hamas, the terrorist thugs who launched that barbaric assault on Israel almost two years ago, mutilating, killing and taking hostages as they went about their evil business, surrender unconditionally.

Otherwise Trump’s edifice crumbles. With the best will in the world, I can’t see Hamas agreeing to that.

Trump wants the immediate release of the 48 hostages Hamas still holds, of whom, sadly, only 20 are now reckoned to be still alive, a move which would relinquish what sway Hamas still has over Israel. 

He insists that they lay down their weapons, with which they’ve terrorised Israel and the Palestinians of Gaza these past 20 years.

President Donald Trump wants the immediate release of the 48 hostages Hamas still holds, of whom, sadly, only 20 are now reckoned to be still alive, a move which would relinquish what sway Hamas still has over Israel

Plus his plan makes it clear that Hamas can play no role in Gaza’s future, whatever it is. The group must not just disarm but depart the field, its best hope being amnesty and exile.

Now if Hamas were to agree to all this, the world would be a much better place – and peace would have a chance. But I struggle to see why Hamas would oblige, since there’s nothing for it in being complicit in its own extinction.

Trump has given Hamas three to four days to comply – or face annihilation. If it defies him, ‘Israel will have my full backing to finish the job’, says the President, by which he means the military destruction of what remains of Hamas.

But Israel has been pounding Hamas for two years now and, though the group is seriously degraded, it somehow manages not to be snuffed out. It’s not clear Israel has any better idea how to do that now than before.

What is beyond doubt is that Israel’s relentless onslaught, with its inevitable toll of civilian casualties and urban devastation, has turned world opinion against it. Israel is now regularly – if unfairly – accused of genocide.

This, in turn, has given renewed impetus to the international movement to recognise a Palestinian state, even though no such entity has ever existed or exists now (and is only vaguely envisaged in the Trump peace plan). The British Government jumped on this bandwagon only last week.

Trump’s plan has the broad support of most of the world’s leading Muslim nations (such as Indonesia and Pakistan) and all the most important Arab states of the Middle East. That is quite an achievement.

Israel has been pounding Hamas for two years now and, though the group is seriously degraded, it somehow manages not to be snuffed out (an Israeli strike on a 12-storey high-rise in Gaza City earlier this month)

But if Israel is unleashed to bring even more death and destruction to Gaza in a renewed bid to achieve the total destruction of Hamas, the Trump peace plan would die before it even gets off the ground. 

Arab support would dissipate more quickly than snow in the Sahara and global opprobrium would continue to be heaped on Israel.

Perhaps Hamas is more pliable than I think. It is already under huge pressure from even Qatar and Turkey, two countries who’ve had somewhat friendly relations with it in the recent past, to fall in line. 

But I understand the terrorists are kicking back, saying they are being asked to agree to ‘complete surrender’. Even if Trump’s plan doesn’t fall at the first (Hamas) hurdle, there are hurdles galore to come.

It’s proposed that Trump would chair a so-called Board of Peace to act as a sort of interim government for Gaza. It would be made up of various interested parties, including our very own

Sir Tony Blair, whose institute came up with the blueprint on which the Trump plan is based.

Blair has superb contacts with the Trump administration, the Israeli government and the leading Arab states of the region. 

He has played a seminal role behind the scenes in getting all these disputatious parties on-side. It is quite the diplomatic achievement. But what is being proposed is not necessarily practical.

It’s proposed that Trump would chair a so-called Board of Peace to act as a sort of interim government for Gaza. It would be made up of various interested parties, including our very own Sir Tony Blair, whose institute came up with the blueprint on which the Trump plan is based

The Board of Peace is meant to preside over a phased Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the deployment of an Arab ‘stabilisation force’ from countries like Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who would also train a new Gaza police force. This switchover would be tricky, to say the least.

There is no history of successful Arab peacekeeping forces. Arabs will be wary of being seen to operate in tandem with the Israeli military and of becoming a new occupation force. Both risks seem inevitable to me.

There is no timetable for the handover and no time limit on how long the Board might rule. Arab and Israeli forces might have to be seen

working together for quite some time, especially since Israel would retain a security buffer on the Gaza side of the border.

The Palestinian Authority, which runs part of the West Bank, is cut out of the picture until the Board has determined it is ‘totally transformed’. Since the PA is a corrupt, unpopular gerontocracy, that is no easy task. Netanyahu knows this. It would require a ‘miraculous transformation’, he said yesterday, with just a hint of a smile.

It’s been said that Netanyahu had to be browbeaten by Trump into agreeing to his peace plan. In truth, the Israeli PM is the big winner. If it collapses at the Hamas hurdle, he will have carte blanche from the Americans to do whatever it takes to eliminate the group.

If Hamas proves not to be the stumbling block I envisage, then the burden of what happens next – the peace-keeping force, training the police, rebuilding the destroyed infrastructure, providing enough security for the Board of Peace’s remit to run – shifts to the Arab countries, while Netanyahu would have got the remaining hostages back.

Netanyahu would be able to say that he’d signed up for a peace deal alongside America and the Arab nations. He stood foursquare by it. If it wasn’t working out quite as well as folks hoped, that wasn’t his fault. Speak to the Arabs – or the Americans.

In the short run, the Trump plan will destabilise Netanyahu’s already shaky government. The hard Right in his cabinet want to annex Gaza. They’re furious he’s agreed to it remaining in Palestinian hands.

Until now, it was generally agreed that if they forced an election, Netanyahu would be turfed out. But if the hostages are free and a peace process of sorts is underway and increasingly under Arab responsibility, then his defeat is no longer a foregone conclusion.

If Hamas throws in the towel, the Trump plan would still face formidable obstacles. But these are not insurmountable. The plan is ambitious. There’s nothing wrong in that. It’s different from previous peace initiatives. That is an advantage.

Trump has done well to marshal widespread support behind it, especially in the Muslim world.

But I fear it rests on a fiction – that Hamas will surrender. We must hope I’m wrong – and that President Trump is right.