New Delhi, Jul 31: US President Donald Trump announced that the Board of Peace has reached an agreement for the “complete disarmament” of Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza, with a senior Hamas official confirming that the group has accepted the plan.
According to Trump, Israeli forces will withdraw from the Gaza Strip as the disarmament process is completed. However, Israel has not yet issued an official response to the proposal.
The agreement, brokered with the help of mediators from Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey, envisages a phased disarmament process that will be independently monitored, US and Board of Peace officials told reporters.
Officials said an Implementation Verification Committee will oversee compliance, providing third-party monitoring as neither Hamas nor Israel can independently verify the other’s actions.
They cautioned that dismantling Hamas’ military infrastructure – including its weapons depots, and production facilities – could take considerable time. According to the plan outlined by officials, Hamas police in Gaza would first surrender their weapons to transitional authorities.
This would be followed by the decommissioning of heavy weapons, closure of tunnels and military facilities, and the disbanding of fighters operating them. In the final phase, all personal weapons in Gaza, including those held by militias and clans, would be addressed under Palestinian law.
While some negotiators have described the agreement as a significant breakthrough, officials acknowledged that considerable caution and scepticism remain on all sides. Meanwhile, Egypt’s state-linked Al-Qahera News reported that Cairo will soon host a meeting of mediators from Egypt, the United States, Qatar, and Turkey to confirm all parties’ commitment to implementing the agreement. The date of the meeting has not yet been announced, according to the report.
