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US President Donald Trump on Thursday announced an agreement for the “complete disarmament” of Hamas.
Trump called it a critical step toward a new Palestinian government in Gaza.
“Today, the Board of Peace reached a HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza. This is a monumental step toward lasting PEACE and SECURITY,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Trump also disclosed that the disarmament would take place in phases.
“As disarmament is completed, Israeli forces will withdraw, and the International Stabilisation Force will work with a new Palestinian police force to take responsibility for Gaza,” he added.
Senior Hamas officials told AFP that the agreement reached with Israel includes provisions addressing the group’s weapons and the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip.
“An agreement has been reached regarding the issue of weapons…Furthermore, an agreement has been reached on a gradual withdrawal of (Israeli forces)” from the strip, a senior Hamas official said.
There was no immediate statement from Israel.
Trump’s announcement came after sources familiar with the ongoing talks with mediators in Cairo told AFP that the Palestinian Islamist movement was progressing towards a deal involving the decommissioning of its weapons.
The thorny issue of Hamas’s disarmament has been one of the key sticking points in the advancement of the ceasefire deal that has been in place between Israel and the group in Gaza since October.
Despite the ceasefire, violence has continued in Gaza, with Israeli strikes killing at least four people, including two children, on Thursday, according to health officials.
Cairo is set to host a meeting “soon” of the Gaza truce mediators, which also include the United States, Qatar and Turkey, state-linked Al-Qahera News reported early Friday in Egypt.
The news outlet did not specify when the meeting would take place but said that it would discuss implementing the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire plan, a roadmap for which Hamas and Palestinian factions have agreed.
Under Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza, the second phase of the ceasefire was to involve Hamas’s disarmament and a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territory.
The plan also provides for a group of Palestinian technocrats, the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), to assume day-to-day governance during Gaza’s transitional phase out of war.
Earlier, a diplomatic source told AFP: “We continue to advance the implementation roadmap that offers a balanced and pragmatic path forward, with all weapons decommissioned and a phased transition of responsibilities taking place to hand over full authority to the technocratic government.”
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. One authority, one law, one weapon.”
The roadmap, the source said, would create “a process for the elimination of all tunnels, depots of weapons and any weapons production facilities”.
“All weapons, heavy and light, will be under full control of the NCAG in coordination with and with the support of the ISF,” the source added, referring to the International Stabilisation Force, a fledgling body envisaged to comprise multinational troops operating under Trump’s Board of Peace.
The source said a verification mechanism would ensure compliance by each side.
A Hamas source familiar with the talks told AFP earlier that the movement is “awaiting the Israeli response to the amendments we recently submitted to the mediators”.
The source said the amendments concerned two articles in the roadmap presented by the Board of Peace.
Regarding the article concerning weapons, the Hamas source said that “some points were removed, and alternatives were proposed”.
An Israeli political source earlier told AFP that the proposed deal does not “satisfactorily” address Israeli demands.
“Israel demands the complete disarmament of Hamas, including the removal of weapons from Gaza and full demilitarization of the Strip as a precondition for any process,” the source said.
The source also said that “the issue of Gaza did not come up at all” in the meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Trump in Washington this week.
