Symbolic imageTrump announces Hamas disarmament deal as Israel objects
US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that his Board of Peace had reached an agreement for the complete disarmament of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza, with Israeli forces withdrawing in phases as weapons are handed over. Hamas negotiator Ghazi Hamad said the movement will not disarm before Israel withdraws. An Israeli official told Reuters the terms do not meet Israel's demand for full demilitarisation first.
What happened
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday, 30 July, that the Board of Peace had reached a "historic agreement" for the complete disarmament of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza. He said it would run in "carefully structured phases": as disarmament is completed, Israeli forces withdraw and an International Stabilisation Force works with a new Palestinian police force. Two US officials told Axios that Hamas has accepted the terms; the Board of Peace said on X that Hamas had for the first time committed to an actionable plan to give up all its weapons. A Board of Peace spokesperson quoted by Al Hadath said the plan also covers the destruction of tunnels and ammunition depots and bars Hamas from Gaza's governing bodies. Trump thanked the mediators Egypt, Qatar and Turkey; talks on the second phase of the October 2025 ceasefire have run in Egypt for weeks. US and Board of Peace officials gave no fixed timeline for the process.
The view from outside
The National in Abu Dhabi led with the announcement but noted that Hamas itself had issued no statement, that Israeli media reported the text does not address Israeli concerns, and that local health officials count more than 1,200 people killed in Israeli strikes since the ceasefire. Russia's TASS, citing Al Hadath, reported that Hamas would hand heavy weapons to the Palestinian national committee, to be catalogued and stored by an international committee. Serbia's Politika reproduced Trump's post in full without independent reporting.
What could happen next
Hamad told AFP that Hamas will now discuss implementation and a timetable with the mediators, a process he estimated at around fourteen days or more, and that the National Committee, not Israel, would handle the weapons. The Board of Peace's Gaza envoy Nickolay Mladenov said on Friday that implementation and verification must be real and that withdrawal has to move in lockstep with decommissioning. A day before Trump's post, a source told the Jerusalem Post there would be no Israeli pullback from the Yellow Line until Gaza is demilitarised, a sequence Hamas rejects. A US official briefing reporters on Thursday said Israel was "very sceptical" that Hamas will disarm and that Trump would be "very, very disappointed" if Israel did not adhere to the deal.
Israel: No withdrawal from the Yellow Line before Hamas hands over its weapons and Gaza is fully demilitarised; officials call the drafted terms unsatisfactory.
Hamas and Palestinian factions: Accepts a framework for giving up weapons to a Palestinian committee, but says no step will be taken before Israel withdraws and meets its own obligations.
Also involved