There are numerous reasons to doubt terrorist group Hamas’s commitment to complete disarmament as announced by US President Donald Trump on Friday AEST.
Hamas ideology is focused on the destruction of Israel. Hamas has never supported a two-state solution.
It openly advocates for a caliphate, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, in which the Jews are dead, deported or dominated by extremist Islamism. Every ounce of Hamas effort has been dedicated to that end since it was founded in 1987, when it started the first intifada against Israel.
From then until now Hamas has attacked Israel through tens of thousands of rocket attacks, dozens of co-ordinated suicide bombings and larger military-style campaigns.
Hamas won an election in Gaza in January 2006 but then staged a bloody takeover of the Strip in June 2007, ousting its enemy, Fatah, from the territory.
Since then Hamas wasted no time trying to develop Gaza for the benefit of Palestinians. Aid money was diverted into tunnel construction, rocket building and training fighters to attack Israel. In October 2023 the dreadful outcome of Hamas’s ideological obsession led to a highly co-ordinated assault on southern Israel where 1200 people were killed and 251 hostages taken.
The Hamas leadership knew that Israel would attack them back. They were more than happy to sacrifice the lives of Palestinian women and children to pursue (successfully, as it turned out) an international propaganda campaign against Israel.
Now Trump asks us to believe that Hamas has agreed to total disarmament.
Readers of a certain age may remember The X Files science fiction television show where above Agent Fox Mulder’s desk was a poster of a UFO with the words “I want to believe”.
I want to believe that peace is possible in Gaza, but it is more believable that the US is hiding aliens and spaceships in Area 51 than it is believable that Hamas will lay down its weapons in favour of peace and property development.
Trump is not naive but he is invested in wanting his personally sponsored peace process, managed by his appointed Board of Peace, to work. The US President will pressure Israel and, as far as he can, Hamas through its Arab supporters to give substance to the agreement.
For Israel, the critical importance of maintaining its relationship with the US means Benjamin Netanyahu will have little choice but to go along with the terms of agreement, at least initially.
Egypt, Turkey and Qatar brokered the latest version of the peace deal with Hamas. All three are invested in Gaza but in different ways: Egypt’s priority is to keep Hamas ideology away from its domestic population; Qatar was bankrolling the old Hamas political wing; Ankara seeks to build its influence through the Middle East. The involvement of Turkey and Qatar, in particular, generates suspicion in the Sunni Middle East.
Here is the challenge: Hamas sits as the dominant power in Gaza, a position it has brutally enforced since 2006. The whole society is broken, but it is armed to the teeth and built on a shared ideology of “From the river to the sea” antisemitism.
Surrounding Gaza are a whole range of states with deep tribally based animosities and conflicting aspirations for strategic dominance. And there is Israel, the strongest conventional regional military power by far and an (unofficial) nuclear weapons state.
Israel’s neighbours tried to wipe the country off the map in 1948, 1967, 1973 and in the 2023-26 Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah-Iran war. After decades of trying to accommodate a two-state solution Israel will take trust only so far as a guarantee of its survival.
Hamas disarmament is meant to be paced in sequence with Israel Defence Forces withdrawal from Gaza. As the IDF draws down, an international stabilisation force is intended to step in.
Thus far only Indonesia has publicly committed to offer a substantial military commitment to the ISF.
Morocco, Kazakhstan, Kosovo and Albania have pledged small numbers of troops or medical support, and Egypt and Jordan have offered to train a Gazan police force. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have declined to offer forces but have promised financial support.
The challenge is to find countries willing to offer more than token participation in a highly dangerous, heavily populated urban area where there can be little confidence that armed units of Hamas or the separate Palestinian Islamic Jihad will stick with the peace process.
The key to making this improbable peace plan work will be American investment and a degree of military oversight.
What will be needed above all else is verification of Hamas disarmament. The ISF will need to establish a capability to access the tunnel complexes built below Gaza and to find above-ground weapons cashes that Hamas has spent years building.
Before the 2023 war, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar (killed in October 2024) claimed the group had constructed more than 500km of tunnels throughout the Gaza Strip.
The IDF estimates what they call the “Gaza Metro” to be 560km to 720km in length with 5700 entrance shafts identified. Some deep fortress sections of tunnels run 60m to 70m underground and were designed to withstand bunker-busting bombs. Good luck to the ISF troops tasked with disarming Hamas.
I want to believe that peace is at hand, but I don’t believe that it is. Hamas may instead be looking to pause military activity, hand over some token weapons in return for massive financial investment into Gaza. Hamas will want to get its hands on that money.
Having fought for this long, will Hamas really relinquish power? Its history, ideology, propaganda and actions all indicate it won’t. A disarmed Hamas would be set upon by the people it has brutalised for years.
Would you disarm if you were in their shoes?
