Donald Trump has declared a breakthrough in negotiations over the disarmament of Hamas in Gaza and the withdrawal of Israeli forces, but Israel has yet to respond officially to the plan and government officials have voiced scepticism. Announcing the agreement in a social media post on Thursday night, the US president said it involved the “complete disarmament” of Hamas and other armed groups and was “a monumental step toward ending the fighting”.
The 14-point plan, posted by the Board of Peace (BoP) on Friday, urges Israel, Hamas and other Palestinian factions to halt all military operations. It outlines a phased disarmament of Hamas linked to an Israeli withdrawal, with control of Gaza handed to a National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) – a panel of Palestinian professionals backed by a new police force and an international stabilisation force (ISF). An international verification committee would oversee implementation.
Nickolay Mladenov, the BoP’s high representative for Gaza, said: “Today, agreement has been reached on the decommissioning of weapons and civilian transition in Gaza. It took months of very difficult negotiations to get here.” He stressed that implementation and verification “have to be real” and that withdrawal must move “in lockstep with decommissioning”.
However, there was no confirmation from the Israeli government by Friday afternoon that it accepted the agreement. Far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir dismissed it as “unacceptable”, saying on Telegram: “The assassinations in Gaza must continue, the encouragement of immigration must happen, Israel must win.” An Israeli official told Reuters that Israel demands the complete disarmament of Hamas, including the removal of weapons and demilitarisation of the strip, as a precondition for any process, and that the plan under discussion did not provide a satisfactory response.
Hours after Trump announced the agreement, Israel carried out an airstrike on Gaza, wounding several people. Israeli forces have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in Gaza since the October ceasefire. Hamas said it agreed to the roadmap on condition that disarmament is carried out at the same time as Israeli withdrawal. Ghazi Hamad, a member of the Hamas negotiating team, told Al Jazeera: “We will not take any action regarding disarmament prior to Israel’s withdrawal from the strip.”
