A dangerous deal: Trump’s Board of Peace and Hamas – opinion

The issue has never been where Hamas keeps its weapons; it’s always been Hamas having access to them.

By Khaled Abu Tomaeh, Gatestone Institute

For nearly a year, the international community insisted that there could be no future for the Gaza Strip unless Hamas was stripped of every weapon, every tunnel, every missile factory, and every military capability.

US President Donald J. Trump’s September 2025 peace plan was explicit: Gaza would be demilitarized, terrorist infrastructure destroyed, and weapons rendered permanently unusable.

Article 13 of Trump’s 20-point plan states:

“All military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt. There will be a process of demilitarization of Gaza under the supervision of independent monitors, which will include placing weapons permanently beyond use through an agreed process of decommissioning and supported by an internationally funded buyback and reintegration program, all verified by the independent monitors.

Now, however, that clear objective appears to have been replaced by something radically different.

Instead of eliminating Hamas’s arsenal, negotiators are discussing storing weapons, transferring them to another Palestinian party, and even allowing Hamas members to retain “personal firearms.”

The original goal of Trump’s peace plan was not to relocate Hamas’s arsenal. It was to eliminate it permanently. Replacing “demilitarization” with “storage” is a win for Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip.

The latest deal between Trump’s Board of Peace and Hamas, titled “A Roadmap for Completing the Implementation of President Trump’s Comprehensive Peace Plan in Gaza,” states:

“A process to decommission and store heavy weapons, military production sites, depots of weapons, and tunnels shall begin after completing the remaining commitments under the Sharm Sheikh Protocol, the entry of the NCAG [National Committee for the Administration of Gaza], and the deployment of the ISF [International Stabilization Force].”

How did the promise of permanent demilitarization become a discussion about warehouses full of Hamas weapons?

Weapons stored in warehouses remain weapons that function. Explosives stored today can be easily recovered tomorrow. Rocket factories that are preserved can resume production. Tunnels that are mapped rather than destroyed can be used again.

The issue has never been where Hamas keeps its weapons. The issue has always been Hamas having access to them.

The assumption that the NCAG or ISF would be able to prevent terrorists from regaining control over the stored weapons is totally misleading.

Even more disturbing is the new deal’s assertion that “no weapons shall be transferred or handed to Israel or non-Palestinian parties.”

Transferring weapons from one Palestinian group to another is not demilitarization.

Equally disturbing is the new roadmap’s conditioning of disarmament on an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip:

“This process [to decommission and store heavy weapons, military production sites, depots of weapons, and tunnels] shall be linked to an Israeli withdrawal, in phases, from the areas under its control in Gaza and the decommissioning of [Israel-backed] armed militias.”

Why should a terrorist organization that carried out the October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel be allowed to dictate the conditions of its own disarmament?

No country fighting ISIS or al-Qaeda would first withdraw its forces and only then hope terrorists voluntarily surrender their weapons.

Hamas should not be negotiating the terms of its defeat. It should be compelled to unconditionally surrender and disarm.

While discussions about disarmament were underway, Hamas reportedly began distributing more automatic rifles to operatives under the guise of “personal ownership.”

Israel’s Kan News quoted an unnamed Palestinian source as saying that the goal of the rifle distribution was to ensure that weapons stay in the hands of Hamas members. “Hamas will not disarm. Period,” the source asserted.

Before the first stage had even been implemented, Hamas was already looking for loopholes.

Shortly after the new roadmap was announced, senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad said in an interview with Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya TV:

“The weapons will be stored and not handed over, and this is conditional on Israel’s commitment. What we agreed upon with the mediators is storing the weapons, not surrendering them. Our political and civilian role in Gaza continues. Hamas has not and will not abandon its national project to reclaim the Palestinian land. We consider the current phase exceptional due to the circumstances that the Gaza Strip is going through.”

This is the same Ghazi Hamad who publicly vowed that Hamas would repeat the October 7 massacre time and again until Israel is eliminated:

“We must teach Israel a lesson, and we will do this again and again. The Al-Aqsa Flood [the name Hamas uses to describe the October 7 massacre] is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth, because we have the determination, the resolve, and the capabilities to fight.”

This quote alone should destroy confidence in Hamas’s promises to the Board of Peace.

Anyone who thinks that the newly established NCAG will somehow confront Hamas and impose its authority over the terrorist organization is living under an illusion.

Hamas has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007. It controls thousands of armed men, intelligence networks, clan alliances, financial resources, and a deeply entrenched political and security apparatus.

No technocratic committee can simply arrive and displace an organization that has spent nearly two decades ruthlessly consolidating its power.

The far more likely scenario is that Hamas will continue to call the shots from behind the scenes while allowing another Palestinian body to assume responsibility for governance, civil service salaries, reconstruction, and collecting international aid.

This would essentially replicate the Hezbollah model in Lebanon, where a heavily armed, Iran-backed terrorist militia coexists with a formal government while retaining independent military power and ultimate political influence.

Supporters of the new roadmap argue that international observers and the ISF will oversee implementation. International observers may monitor warehouses and oversee the delivery of humanitarian assistance, and the ISF may train Palestinian security forces.

They will not confront Hamas if it decides to rearm. They definitely will not risk their lives dismantling some terrorist infrastructure.

Within hours of the announcement of the roadmap, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps dismissed the plan outright, declaring that the effort to disarm Hamas “will achieve nothing” and had already failed.

Tehran pledged that “the resistance” (Hamas) would remain steadfast until what it called the “final victory” over Israel.

Iran understands Hamas better than anyone else because it has financed, armed, and trained the terrorist organization for decades.

If the Iranian regime is openly rejecting the prospect of Hamas’s disarmament, why should anyone else believe that Hamas intends to honor the agreement?