Hamas Agrees to Disarm, But Only If Israel Leaves Gaza

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The world’s media has briefly remembered the beleaguered Gaza Strip today, after Donald Trump claimed, in a post on his inaptly-named Truth Social account, that the Board of Peace — the body set up under his administration last October to supervise the future of Gaza — has “reached a HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas and all the other armed groups in Gaza”, which he described as “a monumental step towards lasting PEACE and SECURITY”, and “a critical step towards Gaza finally being governed by a new Palestinian government that will work closely with the Board of Peace to help the Palestinian people.”

“At the same time”, he added, “Israel will have the security it deserves, with Gaza no longer used as a base for terror attacks.”

To briefly summarize the situation to date, last October, after two years of genocide, in which at least 70,000 Palestinians (mostly civilians) had been killed, a ceasefire was negotiated whereby Hamas and the other armed factions in Gaza agreed to hand over the remaining Israeli hostages seized on October 7, 2023, in exchange for an end to Israeli hostilities, the withdrawal of their forces to a “Yellow Line”, behind which they retained military control of around 53% of Gaza, and the provision of adequate humanitarian aid for the surviving population, set at 600 trucks a day.

While Hamas faithfully adhered to its obligations, Israel did not. In at least 3,500 violations of the ceasefire agreement, it has killed around 1,300 Palestinians, has expanded its control of Gaza to around 70%, and has failed to allow in anything even vaguely resembling the agreed amount of humanitarian aid.

And yet, even as its slowed-down genocide has continued, with the Palestinians confined to an ever-shrinking area of polluted and deprived medieval-like squalor, Trump’s Board of Peace has failed to do anything to even vaguely condemn it.

Just today, Gaza’s tribal and family leaders, in a separate initiative, “petitioned the mediators to force Israel to end Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe”, as Drop Site News reported, explaining that “Notables, elders, and community heads representing Gaza’s clans, tribes, and families issued a public petition urging the ceasefire’s mediators to end the humanitarian crisis in the Strip.”

The appeal “urged maximum pressure on Israel to meet its obligations, demanding a permanent ceasefire, an end to the siege and starvation, and the free flow of aid.” Despite the ceasefire, they stressed, “Israel keeps violating it, tightening the siege, striking by air, land, and sea, and expanding the ‘yellow line’ that swallows land and blocks return of Palestinians to their homes and neighborhoods.”

Instead of condemning Israel, under Nikolay Mladenov, the Bulgarian former UN official appointed to head the Board of Peace’s operations as the colonial-sounding “High Representative for Gaza”, all of the focus for the second phase of ceasefire deal — which was meant to involve the progressive withdrawal of Israeli troops to facilitate the day-to-day running of Gaza by a Palestinian committee, the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), backed by an International Stabilization Force (ISF), as well as reconstruction and the decommissioning of the Palestinian resistance’s weapons — has focused solely on the latter point.

In the initial negotiations, Hamas had wisely deferred the decommissioning of weapons to the second phase, because, otherwise, they would have been defenceless against an avowed genocidal adversary. They had also made clear that they would hand over their weapons to the Palestinian committee, but Israel — again, unchastised — refused to allow the NCAG’s members to enter Gaza.

On July 6, in an effort to out-maneuver Israel, Hamas agreed to dissolve its government, to pave the way for the NCAG to take over, a move that has now led to the latest efforts to implement a viable “roadmap” for Gaza’s future that doesn’t involve Israel’s otherwise endless obsession with extermination.

Trump’s post went out at 6.24pm yesterday, and, at 1.49am today, the Board of Peace issued its own announcement, stating on X:

The Board of Peace and the mediating countries of Egypt, Qatar, Türkiye, and the United States today are pleased to announce that Hamas has agreed to a detailed Roadmap for implementing the next phases of the Gaza ceasefire.

The agreement concludes months of intensive, good faith negotiations to advance President Donald J. Trump’s vision for establishing new governance, security, humanitarian relief, reconstruction, and economic recovery in Gaza as set out in the Comprehensive Peace Plan and UN Security Council Resolution 2803.

The Roadmap represents a historic breakthrough. For the first time, Hamas officially has committed to an actionable plan for relinquishing all its weapons, which will be followed by Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

It holds the promise of delivering significant benefits to the people of Gaza, who have waited for too long for a better future, and security to the people of Israel.

Our focus now turns to implementation. The Board of Peace has worked closely with the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG). It will soon begin a phased transition toward full authority, backed by the International Stabilization Force (ISF), and will accelerate implementation of the rule of law, security, and humanitarian improvement in Gaza.

Hamas’ perspective

On Al Jazeera Arabic, Ghazi Hamad, a member of the Hamas negotiating team in Cairo, “defended the movement’s preliminary approval of a draft governing weapons in Gaza”, as Drop Site News explained, “describing it as part of a broader framework to prevent renewed war, genocide, displacement and partition, and conditional on Israel fully implementing its obligations.”

As Drop Site News proceeded to explain, “Hamad said the decision ‘was not an easy one’, and acknowledged it would provoke questions and debate.” He stressed that Hamas “‘has not and will not abandon’ its commitment to Palestinian rights and ending the occupation”, and added that “the long, complex and difficult negotiations were conducted in consultation with Palestinian factions and political forces to reach ‘the best possible formula for saving the Palestinian people in Gaza.’”

He also said that “Gaza had endured three years of killing, destruction, displacement and genocide while Palestinians were profoundly abandoned by Arab, Islamic and international actors from whom they had expected support.”

As he proceeded to explain, “The matter is not simply, as some believe, about weapons. It is an entire framework.” Hamas, he added, had agreed to a “roadmap” that “includes an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, reconstruction, the deployment of international forces and a Palestinian national committee taking responsibility for Gaza’s administration.”

The purpose, he said, was “to block Israeli plans ‘aimed at restarting the war, [and] continuing the genocide and dividing the Gaza Strip,’ as well as further displacement and killing”, adding that “any concessions made by Hamas and the factions were made ‘for our people’ to protect Palestinians in Gaza from renewed war and [to] preserve life in the territory.”

On disarmament, Hamad explained that it involved “a process of storing weapons under the responsibility of the Palestinian national committee,” rather than “transferring them to Israel or another outside power.” As he described it, “Israel will not interfere in this matter,” because it is “an internal Palestinian national matter.”

He also pointed out that the agreement calls for “the dismantling and confiscation of the weapons belonging to the militias created by the Israeli occupation forces.”

Crucially, as he also explained, “We will not take any step until we are certain that the Israeli side will implement its obligations.”

He stated that the agreement for an inventory of weapons and their storage “would begin only after the agreement’s first phase including the humanitarian protocol adopted under the Sharm el-Sheikh agreement are fully implemented”; in other words, “Israel would first have to stop attacks, killings and all military activity, withdraw to the Yellow Line, allow aid and repair materials into Gaza, and permit damaged infrastructure to be repaired. The Palestinian national committee must then enter Gaza, international stabilization forces must deploy, and the parties must agree to a timetable for Israel’s gradual withdrawal until its forces are outside the Strip.”

“If Israel does not implement, we will not implement”, Hamad said.

Is there any hope?

According to the Times of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu’s office immediately “issued a statement pouring cold water on the optimism” regarding the deal “by claiming that the disarmament proposal did not meet Israel’s demands for a full demilitarization of Gaza in exchange for any withdrawals from the Strip.”

Noting that the statement “apparently irked the Trump administration”, the newspaper reported that a senior US official working with the Board of Peace put aside diplomatic niceties when he told reporters, “We’re not asking Israel to do anything that isn’t in the 20-point plan that they agreed to initially, and so we’re very confident they will adhere to it. If they don’t, President Trump would be very, very disappointed.”

As the official added, “We just need them to keep to the original agreement that got their hostages home and ended the war. Gaza was the biggest thorn in their side for many years. With all of the different issues they have going on right now, this is not something they want to escalate as an issue right now.”

Also stating, “We believe that they’ll continue to be a good partner in this and comply”, the US official added, “Israel didn’t believe we’d get the deal done to get the hostages out. They didn’t believe we’d get the bodies out. They’re very skeptical that Hamas will disarm. But Hamas did make a deal, and Hamas did come through by getting the bodies out and the hostages, so our intention is to hold Israel to its commitments as well and make sure we can be a fair broker.”

The official also “called out Israel for objecting to” the inclusion of Qatar and Türkiye in the Board of Peace, stating, “There was a lot of criticism, particularly in Israel, when we invited Türkiye and Qatar to join the Board of Peace Gaza Executive Board, but they’ve been essential partners along with Egypt in helping keep this ceasefire together. Israel has its own craziness with their politics, and Palestinian aspirations are important. But we’re trying to put that to the side and constantly push forward.”

Problems

While we wait to see whether the US is either willing or able to back up the official’s frustration with Israel with any kind of meaningful action to ensure compliance and restraint, it’s worth reflecting on how, although this may be the only pragmatic way forward for peace in Gaza — largely as a result of the failures of the west and of influential Muslim countries to do anything for the last 33 months to isolate Israel, or even to stop supplying it with genocidal weapons — it is profoundly unjust.

Essentially, it entrenches the false notion that Hamas are “terrorists” with no right to resist 59 years of the brutal and illegal occupation of the Gaza Strip, and no right to hold their occupier to account for an ongoing genocide that has now lasted for 1,030 days.

As the journalist Linda Mamoun described the situation on X, “In a normal world the country that committed a genocide would be the one required to demilitarize.”

In addition, the whole of the Board of Peace scenario — despite having secured UN Security Council approval — is an insult to all notions of international law, not just because, in July 2024, the International Court of Justice confirmed, in a hugely significant opinion, that the whole of Israel’s occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem is illegal, but also because its “most serious difficulty”, as the international lawyer Itay Epshtain explained, “lies in its structure of legal conditionality.”

As he proceeded to explain, “It appears to make Israel’s withdrawal from occupied Gaza, its reconstruction, and, potentially, the full restoration of public life contingent on the disarmament of Hamas, a non-state armed group”, while, “At the same time, it treats Palestinian self-determination and statehood as outcomes that may become available only after externally assessed reforms.”

As he added, “International law operates in the opposite direction. Israel’s obligation to end its unlawful presence, its obligations as an occupying Power, and the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination are not reciprocal concessions to be earned through Hamas compliance.”

He concluded, “Today’s announcement remains a parchment guarantee, offering no safeguards against the subjugation and abuse of millions of Gazans by Israel” — or, as he added, by “Palestinian militants.”

For Ali Abunimah, the director of The Electronic Intifada, “None of this will be implemented and the resistance in Gaza will not disarm because all depends on the Zionist genocide regime meeting minimal commitments, which it will never do, and which the ‘mediators’, including the genocide regime’s Arab accomplices, will never make it do.”

Don’t forget “New Gaza”

I hope that bleak assessment doesn’t come true, but, in conclusion, it’s also worth bearing in mind that, although the US official who openly criticized Israel evidently believes in the Board of Peace process, no one should forget that, back in January, one of its key members, Trump’s son-in-law, the investor and real estate developer Jared Kushner, delivered a gushing and sickening presentation at Davos, enthusing about establishing a “New Gaza” on the corpse-strewn site of the ongoing genocide.

Kushner’s vision — shared by others in the upper echelons of the Board of Peace — is for a techno-futuristic beach resort and tech hub, in which the Palestinians themselves would, presumably, occupy nothing but the lowliest positions, servicing new super-rich colonizers on their own land, from which they would still be dispossessed — not through sickening religiously-inspired slaughter drawn from the Iron Age, but through the demeaning marginalization of service personnel in 21st century capitalism.

For now, the Board of Peace’s route to the future is less horrific than Israel’s, but neither route offers what the Palestinians need and deserve and are entitled to, which is autonomy on their own land, and permanent peace from the genocidal monsters living next door to them.

* * * * *

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of a photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’, which ran from 2012 to 2023), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (see the ongoing photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”, which you can watch on YouTube here.

In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and, in 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody.

Since 2019, Andy has become increasingly involved in environmental activism, recognizing that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to life on earth, and that the window for change — requiring a severe reduction in the emission of all greenhouse gases, and the dismantling of our suicidal global capitalist system — is rapidly shrinking, as tipping points are reached that are occurring much quicker than even pessimistic climate scientists expected. You can read his articles about the climate crisis here. He has also, since, October 2023, been sickened and appalled by Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and you can read his detailed coverage here.

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