Trump Hails 'Historic Agreement' To Disarm Hamas, But Israel 'Skeptical'

"Today, the Board of Peace reached a HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza," Trump declared Thursday evening on Truth Social.

"This is a monumental step toward lasting PEACE and SECURITY," he added, following months of delicate negotiations involving mediators Qatar, Egypt, Turkey. Implementation is as soon as in the coming weeks, a US official told Axios, after Hamas was widely reported to agree and sign on to the deal.

"This agreement is 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,” Trump wrote. "At the same time, Israel will have the security it deserves, with Gaza no longer used as a base for terror attacks."

However, there's still some angst and reports of incompleteness to the agreed-upon deal. And in the West Bank, Jewish settler attacks on Palestinian villages and towns are on the significant uptick - which militants in Gaza have historically kept a close eye on and reacted to.

But so far, under the terms of the agreement Hamas would fully step down from governing Gaza, yielding control to the newly proposed National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) - a body designed to replace both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. According to a senior US official, this new administrative council "will work for the people of Gaza."

As has been demonstrated in the region many times over, reality may prove far more complex. While Hamas official Ghazi Hamad confirmed to Al Jazeera that "difficult" negotiations had indeed yielded an agreement, his remarks cast immediate doubt on how it would actually be enforced.

Hamad declared, "We will not take any steps regarding disarmament before Israel withdraws from the Gaza Strip," while adding that the NCAG itself would oversee disarmament without any Israeli participation.

This condition directly conflicts with Trump's vision of a "carefully structured" and phased transition, which conditions the withdrawal of Israeli forces on the progressive completion of the disarmament process.

For Israel's part, its forces would not withdraw its military behind the "yellow line" a demarcation in place Gaza since a peace framework was announced in October, until disarmament is complete, per the US plan.

The Hill details that the disarmament process alone could be quite complex:

U.S. and Board of Peace officials said the first step in the roadmap is establishing a “complete monopoly of weapons,” so that Hamas cannot disrupt the peace process moving forward. 

The first tranche of weapons would be police firearms, followed by heavy weapons, weapons depots and tunnels, they said. “That will obviously be a very technical process in which we will rely heavily on the expertise and support of the International Stabilization Force, which has studied this situation for months now and looked at how this can be done,” said one official. 

The final challenge would be collecting “personal weapons,” which would be achieved through enforcing existing Palestinian legislation.

“Of course, there’s the issue of the militias and the clans that exist in Gaza that they will also have to demilitarize and decommission their weapons as part of this process,” the official said. 

The full Trump post:

So while the US and regional leaders are busy celebrating and hailing the plan, the proverbial devil will be in the details and in the process - and needless to say a lot could go wrong.

This is why one US official has described the Israelis as skeptical that this will actually come together and end in the disarming of Hamas and other groups. "They’re very skeptical that Hamas will disarm. But again, they’re not really being asked to do much in the process because this isn’t really a trust deal. This is really, you know, it’s a conditions-based deal. And as things happen, that everyone has to follow the obligations they’ve taken," the official said.