President Trump declared that Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza have agreed to a complete disarmament deal, a phased arrangement that, if carried out, would mark the most consequential shift in Middle East security since the October 7 attacks.
Trump posted the announcement on Truth Social on the evening of July 30, calling it a "HISTORIC agreement" reached by his Board of Peace. The deal, part of what the administration calls the Trump 20-Point Plan, requires Hamas to surrender all weapons within weeks, end all military activity and recruitment, and disclose and destroy its tunnel networks beneath Gaza. In return, Israeli forces would withdraw from Gaza in phases as disarmament milestones are verified on the ground.
The announcement caps eight months of negotiations, the New York Post reported, with Iran actively working behind the scenes to convince Hamas not to sign. Egypt, Qatar, and Türkiye served as mediators. And for the first time, according to a Board of Peace statement, Hamas has "officially committed to an actionable plan for relinquishing all its weapons."
The structure of the agreement reflects a hard-nosed recognition that trust between Israel and Hamas does not exist, and that no one expects it to. A U.S. official, speaking to Just the News via The Hill, put the dynamic plainly:
"They're very skeptical that Hamas will disarm. But again, they're not really being asked to do much in the process because this isn't really a trust deal. This is really, you know, it's a conditions-based deal. And as things happen, that everyone has to follow the obligations they've taken."
That framing matters. Israel will not pull its military behind the "yellow line", a dividing line in Gaza established since a peace framework was announced last October, until disarmament is verified. The process is estimated to take 200 to 350 days and will proceed on a sector-by-sector basis. No withdrawal happens on promises alone.
Once disarmament is complete, an International Stabilization Force will work alongside a new Palestinian police force to maintain security. Day-to-day governance would shift to a new Palestinian technocratic body, the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, or NCAG, under the oversight of the Board of Peace. Hamas itself recently dismantled its own governing structure to allow this Board of Peace-approved panel to take over, the Washington Examiner reported.
The agreement's ambition is sweeping. An anonymous diplomatic source described the terms in blunt language: "No exceptions for certain weapons or certain people. One authority, one law, one weapon."
For all the fanfare from Washington, Israel has offered no official confirmation. An Israeli political source told Newsmax that the 15-point document under discussion does not "satisfactorily" address Israeli demands for full demilitarization. The Jerusalem Post separately reported that the document fails to "adequately address" those same demands.
That gap between Washington's announcement and Jerusalem's silence is worth watching. The deal's conditions-based architecture was designed precisely because Israel does not trust Hamas to follow through. But whether Israel views the conditions themselves as sufficient remains an open question.
Trump's broader Middle East diplomacy has moved on several fronts simultaneously. The administration has tied its peace framework to an expansion of the Abraham Accords, linking progress in Gaza to a wider regional architecture that includes Iran negotiations and Arab state normalization with Israel.
A Hamas official confirmed Friday that the group did reach an agreement on disarmament, calling it the most critical element of the ceasefire deal, Breitbart reported. Senior Hamas officials separately confirmed agreements on weapons decommissioning and a gradual Israeli withdrawal.
But Hamas also hedged. Ghazi Hammad, a Hamas spokesman, warned that "Hamas will not implement any step of the Gaza peace deal if the Israeli occupation forces do not fulfil their obligations under the agreement." That language preserves an off-ramp for Hamas if it decides, at any point, that Israel has not met its end of the bargain.
The administration has also been pressing Arab leaders to normalize ties with Israel as part of the same diplomatic push, a strategy designed to build regional pressure on all parties to stay at the table.
Trump acknowledged in his post that "there is still much work to do." That is an understatement. The gap between a signed agreement and a disarmed Gaza is measured in months, not days, and every phase requires verification, compliance, and political will from parties that have spent decades at each other's throats.
The tunnel networks alone represent an enormous logistical and intelligence challenge. Hamas must disclose them. They must be destroyed. And the sector-by-sector approach means that any failure in one zone could stall progress across the strip.
The parallel track on Iran adds another layer of complexity. Tehran spent months trying to keep Hamas from signing this deal. Whether Iran accepts the outcome or works to undermine it from the outside will shape whether the agreement holds.
Trump framed the stakes in personal terms, referencing the devastation that preceded this moment. "One year ago there was a violent raging war, humanitarian crisis and hostages kept in brutal captivity," he wrote. "We have made historic progress."
The agreement has even drawn bipartisan acknowledgment, a rarity in a political environment where foreign policy consensus has all but disappeared.
Fox News reported that the Board of Peace confirmed Hamas has committed to "an actionable plan for relinquishing all its weapons, which will be followed by Israeli withdrawal from Gaza." That sequence, disarmament first, withdrawal second, is the load-bearing wall of the entire framework. If it holds, the deal changes the region. If it doesn't, the agreement becomes one more piece of paper in a conflict that has consumed thousands of them.
Everybody said it could never be achieved. Now the hard part begins: proving them wrong on the ground, one sector at a time.
