What happened
President Donald Trump claimed Thursday on Truth Social that Hamas had agreed to “COMPLETE DISARMAMENT” in Gaza and that “Israeli forces will withdraw” from the war-torn region. Details on the deal remain limited, but Trump said it was brokered by the international Board of Peace, which he established earlier this year to oversee the Gaza peace plan.
Who said what
The breakthrough is a “critical step” toward Gaza being “governed by a new Palestinian government” and Israel having “the security it deserves,” Trump said. He added that the International Stabilization Force would collaborate with “a new Palestinian police force to take responsibility for Gaza being safe.”
But “we didn’t say disarmament,” Hamas negotiator Ghazi Hamad told The Wall Street Journal. Instead the group simply “agreed to place its weapons in a storage facility.” Israel has yet to make a public statement on the reports. Trump would be “very, very” disappointed if Israel rebuffed the plan, a senior Trump adviser told reporters.
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Hamas has “long regarded giving up all its weapons as tantamount to surrender,” The New York Times said, so “disarmament would be a monumental undertaking.”
What next?
Board of Peace officials expected details of the deal would have to be “refined” over the coming weeks and months, Bloomberg said, and the timeline for Israeli withdrawal has yet to be finalized.
