Hamas Agrees to Disarm Under Gaza Ceasefire Deal
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- Hamas confirmed via senior official Bassem Naim on X that it agreed to a disarmament road map contingent on Israel ending hostilities and withdrawing troops from Gaza, a sea change for a group whose charter calls for armed resistance against Israel.
- Donald Trump announced the agreement on social media hours before Hamas's confirmation, stating disarmament would proceed in structured phases linked to Israeli withdrawal and deployment of the International Stabilization Force.
- The agreement obtained by AP specifies that heavy weapons, military production sites and tunnels will be decommissioned only after a U.S.-backed Palestinian technocratic committee arrives and the ISF deploys — a process a Board of Peace official estimated could take 200 to 350 days.
- Hamas officials said weapons would be "collected and stored" inside Gaza under Palestinian technocratic committee supervision and explicitly not handed to Israel or non-Palestinian parties, per the regional officials briefed on the process.
- An Israeli official, speaking anonymously, said there will be no Israeli withdrawal from the roughly 60% of Gaza it holds before Hamas is disarmed and the strip demilitarized; Israel was consulted but is not a signatory to the deal.
- The deal's guarantors are the U.S., Turkey, Egypt and Qatar, and the Palestinian technocratic committee told AP it does not expect to enter Gaza for at least two months due to concerns Israel will pose challenges.
- The war began after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack killed around 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage; Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians, Gaza's Health Ministry said.
- Israel has not publicly commented on the agreement, and U.S. officials said Israel was not being asked to do anything beyond what it initially committed to in Trump's 20-point ceasefire plan.
Why it matters: The deal would take 200–350 days to fully implement heavy-weapons decommissioning — a timeline that exists only in officials' briefings and is not in the written agreement — and hinges on Israel pulling back from the ~60% of Gaza it still holds, which Israeli officials have already publicly refused to do before disarmament is complete.
