“Today the Peace Council has reached a HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE disarmament of Hamas and all other armed groups in the Gaza Strip. This is a huge step towards long-term PEACE and SECURITY,” wrote D. Trump in a post published on Truth Social.
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A Peace Council official stated that Hamas and other armed groups will eventually hand over their weapons to the committee, starting with police weapons, and personal weapons will be handed over last.
The disarmament of Hamas is a decisive step in implementing D. Trump’s peace plan, which aims to end the war in the Gaza Strip and move towards the formation of a technocratic government in the region.
Mediators have been trying to negotiate with Hamas for several months regarding the implementation of the plan.
Regarding this disarmament agreement, Washington coordinated actions “at every step” with Israel, a U.S. official told CNN, later acknowledging that Israel remains skeptical about whether Hamas will disarm, and said that “this is really not a confidence agreement.”
U.S. and Peace Council officials on Thursday described the agreement as the result of several months of “very delicate negotiations” that produced a “breakthrough,” reaching an agreement on “what needs to be done,” but warned that it remains a “conditional agreement.”
In his post, D. Trump thanked mediators from Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey, as well as his administration for their help in making this agreement.
Hamas officials told the AFP news agency that the committee established by D. Trump’s Peace Council to govern the Gaza Strip will oversee the process of storing the Islamist movement’s weapons.
The group said it hopes that the mediators and the Peace Council will ensure that Israel complies with the terms of the agreement, including the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip.
A member of the group’s negotiating team, Ghazi Hamada, said the movement is making “concessions for our people in the Gaza Strip to save them from death and displacement.”
“Israel will not interfere in the disarmament issue. The National Committee is the institution that will take on this task,” said G. Hamada, referring to the National Committee for the Administration of the Gaza Strip (NCAG).
Israel has not yet made any statement.
Despite the ceasefire announced in October, violence in the Gaza Strip continues – on Thursday, at least four people were killed in Israeli strikes, including two children, health officials reported.
Implementation of the agreement
The Peace Council confirmed on the social network X that Hamas “agreed to a detailed guideline plan for the implementation of the next stages of the Gaza ceasefire.”
“Now our focus shifts to implementation,” the organization wrote, adding that the NCAG “will soon begin to gradually take over all powers.”
D. Trump said in an earlier post on the social network that once Hamas disarmament is completed, “Israeli forces will withdraw, and International stabilization forces will cooperate with the new Palestinian police forces to take responsibility for Gaza’s security for its residents and neighbors.”
Peace Council chief representative for the Gaza Strip Nickolay Mladenov said on Friday that reaching the agreement “required many months of very tough negotiations.”
“What happens next is even more important. Implementation and verification must be real,” N. Mladenov wrote on X.
“The withdrawal of forces must happen alongside the handing over of weapons,” he added.
Egyptian government-affiliated television al Qahera News reported early Friday that Cairo will soon host a meeting of ceasefire mediators in the Gaza Strip, including the U.S., Qatar, and Turkey, for the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire plan.
