Hamas’ response to President Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza is being watched closely and with much skepticism by pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel groups in Montreal. On Friday, Hamas said it would release all of the hostages, dead or alive, and hand over power to Palestinians, but that other parts of the 20-point plan announced earlier this week would require further negotiations. Hank Topas, B’nai Brith Canada’s Quebec regional director, said he was not overly reassured by their response based on previous attempts to come to an agreement. “Right now, I don’t see progress,” he said in an interview. “I think we’ve heard it before from Hamas, where they claim that they have an agreement, and then everything breaks down because they start imposing additional conditions on what people on this side in the Western thought process think is an agreement.” Topas said he would have liked to have seen Hamas say in much clearer terms that they will completely disarm and release all of the hostages it is still holding at a time and place, which has yet to happen. Hamas, which Canada has designated as a terrorist organization, should “concede defeat,” leave Gaza immediately, and agree to all of Trump’s terms, Topas said, noting that Israel has already “conceded quite a bit to bring it to this point.” Israel must ‘immediately stop the bombing of Gaza,’ Trump says In a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump suggested the statement by Hamas indicates a path toward peace in the region is achievable. The U.S. president also called on Israel to “immediately stop the bombing of Gaza, so that we can get the Hostages out safely and quickly! Right now, it’s far too dangerous to do that. We are already in discussions on details to be worked out. This is not about Gaza alone, this is about long sought PEACE in the Middle East.” Trump has given Hamas a Sunday evening deadline to accept the terms of the deal, otherwise “all HELL, like no one has ever seen before, will break out against Hamas,” he wrote on social media. This is a negotiation ‘at gunpoint’: Palestinian group In Montreal, at least one pro-Palestinian group didn’t share the president’s sense of optimism. Divest for Palestine spokesperson Benoit Allard said from what he has seen so far, there was not much that Hamas hadn’t already agreed to previously and that the manner by which the peace plan was presented raises several concerns. “Basically, what we have is like negotiation held at gunpoint, literally, with two million people in Gaza that are basically under threat of being either bombed or starved to death by the Israeli army, with the full support of the U.S. government and the complicity of most Western countries, including Canada,” he told CTV News. “What we think is that the Palestinian people shouldn’t have to negotiate the end of an ongoing genocide. It should be stopped. That should be unconditional,” he said, adding that the U.S. government should not have a say in Gaza’s future. Allard’s organization is a collective of citizens standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people. Beyond negotiations, he said people who are outraged by the devastation in Gaza should focus their efforts on supporting the resistance to Israeli military aggression. Divest for Palestine and Convergence des luttes anticapitalistes (CLAC) plan to hold a week of action beginning Oct. 6 to show solidarity with Palestinians, including workshops at the Université de Montréal and a gathering on Oct. 7 at Square Victoria. The gathering coincides with the two-year anniversary of the Hamas attack on southern Israel that ended with 1,200 people killed and more than 200 others abducted, and marked the beginning of the 23-month war. A growing number of experts, including those commissioned by the United Nations, have accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, which the Israeli government vehemently denies. Gaza plan ‘sloppily crafted’ but there is hope it can succeed: McGill professor Another person who is watching the situation closely is McGill political science professor Rex Brynen, who says the plan for Gaza in its current form will be “extraordinarily difficult to implement” but has some hope it can succeed. “It’s somewhat sloppily crafted that has huge disadvantages, that makes it very likely it will fall apart before it’s fully implemented, but it also creates opportunities for creative interpretation, so there may well be some potential,” he said. Brynen said he suspects Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was hoping the plan would fall apart. “I don’t think he wants to end the war at this point, and that’s been a constant theme. It’s the thing he’s been much criticized by the families of hostages in Israel, that he’s prioritized prosecution of the war over the release of hostages,” he said. “Remember, at the beginning of the year, we had a deal on ending the war. It fell apart. It fell apart for several reasons, but it mainly fell apart because the Israeli government didn’t want to move on to stage two and then an eventual withdrawal from Gaza. So he’s already been arguing in Israel that this deal won’t be fully implemented, that it gives Israel lots of wiggle room. I think he was rather hoping that Hamas would say no, and then he could pin the continuation of the war on Hamas.” Hours after the Hamas statement, Reuters and other media reported that Israel had instructed the military to reduce its offensive activity in Gaza. In a statement on X, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said he welcomed commitments from Hamas to relinquish power and released the hostages. “Canada is intensifying its coordination with international partners to build a just and lasting peace. We stand ready to support the sustained, unimpeded, and large-scale delivery of humanitarian aid into and throughout Gaza,” Carney said. “Canada is steadfast in its support for a sovereign, democratic, and viable State of Palestine, building its future in peace and security with the State of Israel.”
