A Crucial Step in Trump’s Gaza Plan

On the face of it, Gaza is edging closer toward peace. A crucial border crossing into Egypt reopened last week. Reconstruction plans are being circulated. A committee of Palestinian technocrats is on standby to take over from Hamas.

But durable peace seems a distant prospect. Since the October cease-fire, Israeli strikes have killed hundreds of Palestinians (the Israeli military says the strikes targeted Hamas or its affiliates). An estimated one million people are still in need of emergency shelter, according to the U.N. But under President Trump’s peace plan, nothing can meaningfully move forward until one precondition is met: Hamas needs to disarm.

Questions over the details of disarmament and how to achieve it have held up progress for months. Now my colleagues have reporting that begins to answer some of those questions.

Inside the plan to disarm Hamas

There are many obstacles to creating the conditions for a lasting peace in Gaza. Any chance of overcoming them hinges on a crucial first step: Gaza’s demilitarization.

Israel is unlikely to withdraw its troops until Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza have laid down their arms. Other nations have made clear that they don’t want to send in their own troops as part of an international stabilization force unless that happens; none of them want their soldiers to be fighting armed militants inside Gaza.

Basically, without demilitarization, very little in Trump’s 20-point peace plan can move forward.

But it hasn’t been clear what exactly demilitarization would entail. One big question: Will Hamas have to give up all its weapons? Or will it be allowed to keep some?

That’s why a story published yesterday by my colleagues Adam Rasgon, Natan Odenheimer and Abu Bakr Bashir is important. They have learned details about a U.S. draft plan for demilitarizing Gaza. According to officials and people familiar with the plan, it requires Hamas to surrender all its weapons that are capable of striking Israel, but would allow the group to keep some small arms, at least temporarily.

The team drawing up the plan, which includes Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, intends to share the document with Hamas in the next few weeks.

There are lots of details we still don’t have. Even if demilitarization can be negotiated, it’s not clear who would take ownership of the weapons that Hamas is meant to hand over, or how that process would be carried out. Neither the Israeli prime minister’s office nor Hamas officials responded to requests for comment yesterday.

Still, even presenting the plan to Hamas would be significant. Demilitarization is “the linchpin of everything,” Shira Efron, chair of Israel policy at the RAND Corporation, a U.S.-based research institute, told my colleagues.

“If it happens, everything can happen,” she said. “If it doesn’t happen, we could end up with two Gazas, one run by Israel and the other by Hamas — or a return to a fully fledged war.”

Ideology and reality

One reason this has been such a sticking point is that armed struggle against Israel is a central part of Hamas’s ideology and identity.

As Adam, Natan, and Abu Bakr reported, “the idea of even discussing disarmament has created fissures in the group. For many Hamas members, giving up their weapons is tantamount to surrender.”

Hamas has not said publicly whether it might be evolving on this. But we’ve gotten some hints. On Sunday, Khaled Meshal, a senior Hamas official, suggested that the group wants to hold on to its weapons, but was not planning to use them in the near future.

Without movement on the part of Hamas, it will be difficult for Trump’s new Board of Peace to implement the rest of the peace plan.

The next steps would include deploying an international stabilization force to Gaza, beginning large-scale reconstruction there and handing over the administration of the territory to a Palestinian technocratic committee with a suitably technocratic name: the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza.

‘Annexation by degrees’

Earlier this week, Israel’s government made it easier for Jewish settlers to buy land and undercut the Palestinian Authority in parts of the occupied West Bank. The move is widely seen as a violation of international law. It also ignores Trump’s opposition to Israeli annexation by advancing what my colleagues describe as “annexation by degrees.”

In Gaza, where two years of war have killed over 70,000 people and destroyed more than 80 percent of buildings, Palestinians are still hoping for speedy reconstruction and lasting peace. But, as Natan told me, many worry that the fragile cease-fire will collapse and that Hamas and Israel will resume fighting.

In this context, Natan said, the latest effort to pressure Hamas to disarm remains a long shot. “It’s just a very first step,” he told me. “Hamas has yet to agree to it and there are still many hurdles to go.”

In Israel: Palestinians and Jews held protests against a surge in gun violence in the Arab community. At least 36 Israeli Arabs have died since the beginning of the year, a spike driven by organized crime, according to local media reports.

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