Hamas agrees to disarm under Trump plan, but no word from Israel

Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) — Hamas said Friday it had agreed to a deal announced by US President Donald Trump to end the war with Israel, that includes it handing over its weapons to a Palestinian governing committee and the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. Israel did not immediately comment on the announcement, but shortly beforehand an Israeli political source had told AFP the proposed agreement did not 'satisfactorily' address Israeli demands for the full demilitarisation of the Gaza Strip. The source also said that 'the issue of Gaza did not come up at all' in this week's meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Trump in Washington. Ghazi Hamad, a member of the group'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'. 'Israel will not intervene in the issue of disarmament. The National Committee is the body that will undertake this task,' he said, referring to the National Committee for Administration of Gaza (NCAG). The Board of Peace confirmed in a post on X that Hamas had 'agreed to a detailed Roadmap for implementing the next phases of the Gaza ceasefire'. Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace's high representative for Gaza, said Friday the deal 'took months of very difficult negotiations'. 'What happens next matters even more. Implementation and verification have to be real,' Mladenov wrote on X. 'Withdrawal must move in lockstep with decommissioning,' he added. A Hamas source familiar with the talks told AFP earlier that the movement was 'awaiting the Israeli response to the amendments we recently submitted to the mediators'. Before the deal's announcement, the Israeli political source told AFP: 'Israel demands the complete disarmament of Hamas, including the removal of weapons from Gaza and full demilitarisation of the Strip as a precondition for any process.'