A day after President Trump announced a new Gaza deal to begin disarming Hamas, his Board of Peace released a 15-point plan on Friday, but key questions remain over whether Hamas and Israel will carry out the agreement.
In its initial response, Hamas said on Friday that the “first step” would be for Israel to commit to ending attacks and linked the turnover of what the group called “heavy weapons” to a list of other conditions.
The Israeli government has not issued a formal statement on Mr. Trump’s announcement. The text says the parties have two weeks to determine a schedule, which an international verification committee can extend.
In underlining that Israel must first make concessions for the disarmament deal to move ahead, Hamas highlighted how challenging it will be to carry out the new agreement, which caught many by surprise when Mr. Trump announced it on Thursday.
Experts and officials have raised doubts about whether Hamas and Israel will follow through in implementing the agreement. Questions remain, for instance, about whether Hamas will relinquish all its weapons and also whether Israel will cease its attacks, which is a precondition in the new agreement for further progress.
The cease-fire agreement reached in October between Israel and Hamas required that the Israeli military end its attacks in Gaza. But since then, the military has carried out frequent airstrikes, which it said were targeting Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the second-largest militant group in Gaza. Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was killing all of those who took part in planning the October 2023 attack on southern Israel, as well as any elite Hamas fighters that Israeli security forces found.
Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace’s high representative for Gaza, wrote on social media that “implementation and verification have to be real.”
“Withdrawal must move in lock step with decommissioning,” he wrote, referring to the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and the disarmament of Palestinian armed groups.
The Israeli prime minister’s office has yet to issue a statement on Mr. Trump’s announcement. On Friday evening, the government, citing an anonymous “diplomatic official,” said the Israeli military would not pull back from the “current yellow line” in Gaza without “genuine” disarmament by Hamas. Under the October cease-fire deal, Israeli troops retreated to a “yellow line,” leaving about half the territory still under occupation, but have since pressed deeper into Gaza.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the hard-line minister of national security, said the text of the agreement published by the Board of Peace was “unacceptable to Israel.” The targeted killings in Gaza “must continue,” he wrote on social media.
Mr. Trump’s enthusiastic announcement of the new agreement came days after he and Mr. Netanyahu met at the White House amid recent strains in their relationship.
Hamas’s weapons have been a key sticking point over months of talks in Egypt, one of the main mediating countries. The Board of Peace, the international organization that has been negotiating with Hamas and Israel on Gaza’s future, has demanded that the group gradually give up all of its arsenal — a position that Israeli officials have contended Hamas will not accept.
Armed struggle against Israel has long been central to Hamas’s ideology and a means to stay in power. Many members of the group view any deal in which they would give up their weapons as tantamount to surrender.
On Friday, Ghazi Hamad, a Hamas negotiator, said what was being discussed was Hamas “storing” its weapons “under the responsibility” of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, a committee of Palestinian technocrats working under the Board of Peace’s supervision. Hamas officials have said Israel must first fulfill its commitments under the October cease-fire agreement before anything happens to its weapons.
The text of the agreement released by the Board of Peace calls for disarming Palestinian factions in Gaza after Israel carries out the commitments it made in the cease-fire deal it signed with Hamas in October 2025.
In addition to Israel suspending all its military operations, those commitments involve it relocating its troops to an agreed-upon withdrawal line and allowing the entry of equipment to remove rubble, among other measures.
More than 1,200 people have been killed in the territory since the cease-fire in October, according to the Gaza health ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. The Israeli military has also continued to take over land in Gaza beyond the withdrawal line specified in the October agreement.
In its statement on Friday, Hamas said the inclusion of “heavy weapons” in the agreement was linked to Israel withdrawing from Gaza, reconstruction, the establishment of a Palestinian state and other conditions.
The statement conspicuously mentioned only “heavy weapons,” while the text of the agreement released by the Board of Peace refers to Palestinian groups in Gaza giving up all their weapons. That text, however, makes an exception for personal arms registered with the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza.
Many analysts have expressed skepticism that Israel will agree to withdraw from Gaza, especially ahead of national elections in October. Israeli officials have also rejected the establishment of a Palestinian state.
In agreeing to the disarmament plan, Hamas could be trying to put the onus on Israel to deliver concessions, analysts said.
“For months, the narrative has been that Hamas doesn’t want to disarm,” said Shira Efron, chair of Israel policy at the RAND Corporation, a U.S.-based research institute. “Based on what we know so far, it appears Hamas is kicking the ball to Israel, knowing very well how difficult it will be for the Israeli government to execute this agreement, especially any type of withdrawal of its forces.”
Ibrahim Madhoun, a Palestinian analyst close to Hamas, said that the militant group’s goal was to end the war but that it was concerned Israel would find a way to avoid carrying out the agreement.
“Hamas did everything it could to deliver a deal based on reciprocity and simultaneous implementation,” he said. “Still, there are fears Israel could obstruct it.”
Ms. Efron said it was possible Israel and Hamas could soon return to “a familiar blame game,” accusing each other of failing to uphold the agreement announced by Mr. Trump while little change happens on the ground.
Isabel Kershner contributed reporting to this article.
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