Hamas said Friday it had agreed to a deal that includes handing over its weapons to a Palestinian governing committee and the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip.
The deal is aimed at implementing the long-stalled second phase of the Gaza ceasefire plan brokered by US President Donald Trump, who on Thursday hailed the agreement for Hamas’s “complete disarmament”, calling it a “major milestone”.
Israel has yet to officially comment on the announcement, but a political source told AFP “that there will be no withdrawal whatsoever” from Israeli forces’ current lines “unless Hamas undergoes a genuine disarmament”.
Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir denounced the agreement as “unacceptable”, saying it was “tantamount to agreeing to Hamas organising for the next massacre”.
The Palestinian Islamist group’s weapons have been one of the key sticking points in fully implementing the ceasefire deal, which has been in place since October.
The Israeli source said that “the issue of Gaza did not come up” in this week’s meeting between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington.
But Trump maintained on Friday that Israel was pleased about the new deal.
“We do have an understanding with Israel. Israel’s very happy about it,” Trump told journalists at Camp David.
Hamas said it expected mediators and Trump’s Board of Peace to ensure Israel complied with the deal’s terms, which include Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza.
Israel has long insisted on Hamas’s full disarmament before its forces pull back, and prior to the announcement, the political source had listed “the removal of weapons from Gaza and full demilitarisation of the Strip as a precondition for any process”.
Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas’s negotiating team, said the movement was making “concessions for the sake of our people in the Gaza Strip”.
“Israel will not intervene in the issue of disarmament. The National Committee is the body that will undertake this task,” he said, referring to the National Committee for Administration of Gaza (NCAG), which was established under Trump’s plan to handle day-to-day governance in Gaza.
Despite the October ceasefire, violence has continued in Gaza, with Israeli strikes killing at least four people, including two children, on Thursday, according to health officials.
The new agreement calls for all sides to immediately halt military operations, and for an International Stabilization Force to separate Israeli troops from NCAG-controlled areas.
Focus now on implementation
The Board of Peace confirmed in a post on X that Hamas had “agreed to a detailed Roadmap for implementing the next phases of the Gaza ceasefire”.
“Our focus now turns to implementation,” the organisation wrote, adding the NCAG will “soon begin a phased transition toward full authority”.
Under the roadmap, the NCAG will be responsible for internal security.
Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace’s high representative for Gaza, said Friday the deal “took months of very difficult negotiations”.
“What happens next matters even more. Implementation and verification have to be real,” Mladenov wrote on X.
“Withdrawal must move in lockstep with decommissioning.”
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas welcomed the deal, but said “a lot needs to fall in place for this to work”.
UN chief Antonio Guterres, alluding to the Middle East war and its regional spillover, said the agreement was a rare positive development.
“The only good news in recent days is the announcement by the US president of an agreement for Hamas to relinquish their weapons and for Israel to withdraw its forces from Gaza,” he said.
‘No exceptions’
Egypt‘s state-linked Al-Qahera News said Friday that Cairo will host a meeting soon of the truce’s mediators, which also include the US, Qatar and Turkey.
Earlier, a diplomatic source told AFP that the roadmap “offers a balanced and pragmatic path forward, with all weapons decommissioned and a phased transition of responsibilities” to the new authorities.
The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak publicly on the matter, said there would be “no exceptions for certain weapons or certain people”.
The roadmap lays out a process to decommission and store Hamas’s heavy weapons, military production sites, weapons depots and tunnels, to be implemented by NCAG. A new verification mechanism would ensure compliance.
(FRANCE with AFP)
