GAZA CITY: Hamas said Friday it has agreed to a deal ending the war in Gaza, resolving the group’s disarmament and laying out terms for a gradual Israeli withdrawal from the territory.
President Donald Trump announced the agreement Thursday, calling Hamas’s disarmament a critical step toward forming a new Palestinian government in Gaza.
Hamas confirmed Friday it had accepted a roadmap for the complete disarmament of its fighters, tying the handover of weapons to a phased withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. A committee formed under Trump’s Board of Peace will oversee storage of the group’s weapons, while mediators are expected to ensure Israel meets its own obligations under the deal.
Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas’s negotiating team, said the movement was making concessions “for the sake of our people in the Gaza Strip, to save them from killing and displacement.” He said Israel would not be directly involved in disarmament, describing the National Committee for Administration of Gaza, known as NCAG, as the body responsible for that task. Israel had not issued an immediate statement on the agreement.
Violence has continued in Gaza despite an October ceasefire. Israeli strikes killed at least four people Thursday, including two children, according to health officials in the territory.
The Board of Peace said on X that Hamas had agreed to a detailed roadmap for implementing the ceasefire’s next phases. The group added that NCAG would soon begin a phased transition toward full governing authority in Gaza.
Trump wrote separately that once Hamas’s disarmament is complete, Israeli forces will withdraw and the International Stabilization Force will work alongside a new Palestinian police force to secure Gaza for residents and neighboring states.
Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace’s high representative for Gaza, said the deal took months of difficult negotiations and that its execution now matters most.
“What happens next matters even more. Implementation and verification have to be real,” Mladenov wrote, adding that the withdrawal must move in step with the decommissioning of weapons.
What happens next in the Gaza ceasefire roadmap
Egypt’s state-linked Al-Qahera News reported that Cairo will soon host a meeting of Gaza ceasefire mediators, including the United States, Qatar and Turkey, to discuss the plan’s second phase.
A diplomatic source told Agence France-Presse that the roadmap offers a pragmatic path toward decommissioning all weapons and transferring authority to a technocratic government. The source said there would be “no exceptions for certain weapons or certain people,” describing the goal as one authority, one law and one weapon.
The roadmap is also meant to create a process for eliminating tunnels, weapons depots and any arms production sites, with a verification mechanism to confirm compliance from both sides.
A source familiar with the talks said Hamas was awaiting Israel’s response to amendments it recently submitted on two articles in the roadmap. On the article addressing weapons, the source said some points had been removed and alternatives proposed.
What Israel says about the disarmament deal
Before the announcement, an Israeli political source told AFP that the proposed agreement did not satisfactorily meet Israel’s demands. The source said Israel is seeking Hamas’s complete disarmament, including the removal of weapons from Gaza and full demilitarization of the territory as a precondition for any process.
The source added that Gaza was not raised during this week’s meeting in Washington between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump.
