U.S President Donald Trump announced that a deal has been reached for the “complete disarmament” of Hamas and other armed factions in the Gaza Strip.
The landmark accord was negotiated alongside international mediators from Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey, and established a structured framework for Hamas to relinquish its arsenal in exchange for a full, phased withdrawal of Israeli military forces.
A senior Hamas official has also revealed that they have agreed to the Board of Peace a deal of complete disarmament in Gaza and that an official statement will be released soon.
Trump, in his announcement, revealed that Israel would withdraw from Gaza “as disarmament is completed” and called the agreement “a critical step towards Gaza finally being governed by a new Palestinian government”.
Announcing details of the deal, the Director-General of the Board of Peace and high representative for Gaza, Nickolay Mladenov, in a post on X 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.
“There were several points when I did not believe we would make it…” he continues. “What the agreement says matters. What happens next matters even more. Implementation and verification have to be real. Withdrawal must move in lockstep with decommissioning.
Mladenov, a former Bulgarian foreign minister, has held multiple regional high-level roles in the United Nations – including as the UN’s special coordinator for the Middle East Peace process.
“Ahead of us is a Gaza rebuilt, governed by Palestinians and at peace with Israel, and a political horizon to a meaningful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That is the work now.”
Pan-Atlantic Kompass also reports that the four-page roadmap of Trump’s plan sets out the phased disarmament of Hamas and gradual Israeli withdrawal, with US officials saying each step of the process will be “verified”.
According to page three of the agreement, which Israel is yet to comment on, this is how that would work:
- It will begin with an inventory being made of all heavy weapons, military production sites, weapons depots and tunnels within Gaza
- An “international stabilisation force” will be deployed to Gaza, alongside a newly-formed Palestinian National Committee for the Administration of Gaza – that will manage the process
- The disarmament will be “gradual and sequential”, and will occur based on a schedule to be prepared “within 14 days”
- Disarmament will be linked to a “phased Israeli withdrawal”, with a “verification committee” ensuring each phase is completed
- The agreement states that no weapons will be handed to Israel or any non-Palestinian entity
- After this process is complete, according to the roadmap, this new Palestinian authority “alone shall retain, store, or exercise control over weapons in Gaza”.
