President Trump declared that his Board of Peace has brokered an agreement for the full disarmament of Hamas and every other armed group in Gaza, a deal Israel says it does not yet trust.
Trump posted the announcement on Truth Social on July 30, calling the agreement "a monumental step toward lasting PEACE and SECURITY." Under its terms, Hamas would surrender all weapons, heavy and light, in structured phases over an estimated 200 to 350 days. Israeli forces would withdraw only after disarmament milestones are met, and a new Palestinian governing body called the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza would assume control of the territory in coordination with an International Stabilization Force led by a two-star U.S. Special Forces general.
If the agreement holds, it would mark the most consequential diplomatic achievement of Trump's presidency, and one of the most ambitious disarmament frameworks attempted in the modern Middle East. But Hamas is already attaching conditions, and Israeli officials have made clear they do not believe the group will follow through.
The deal was eight months in the making, the New York Post reported, and is part of a broader 20-point peace plan Trump unveiled last September. Mediators from Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey helped broker the final text. A Board of Peace official told the Post that "the final communication came through the mediators that Hamas has agreed to the final text."
Trump framed the agreement as a turning point for Palestinian governance. In his Truth Social post, he wrote:
"This agreement is a critical step towards Gaza finally being governed by a new Palestinian government that will work closely with the Board of Peace to help the Palestinian people. At the same time, Israel will have the security it deserves, with Gaza no longer used as a base for terror attacks."
The phased structure is designed to avoid the trust problem that has sunk past Middle East frameworks. Israeli forces stay in place until each disarmament benchmark is verified. Only then do they pull back, with the ISF and a newly created Palestinian police force stepping in behind them. Under the deal, Hamas tunnel networks must be disclosed and destroyed, a provision that, if enforced, would dismantle the underground military infrastructure the group spent years building.
The arrangement also strips Hamas of any governing role. The NCAG, a technocratic committee approved by the Board of Peace, would replace both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority as the administrative body in Gaza. An unnamed source quoted by The Jerusalem Post described the end state: at the conclusion of the implementation process, "there would be no remaining terrorist infrastructure in Gaza. Hamas would have no governing or military role, either publicly or behind the scenes, in a model similar to that being applied to Hezbollah in Lebanon."
That Hezbollah comparison is telling. It suggests the template is not negotiated coexistence but permanent organizational dismantlement, the same approach the U.S. and its partners have pursued in Lebanon, where Hezbollah's armed wing has been forced into a diminished posture. Whether that model can be replicated with Hamas, a group that has controlled Gaza's daily governance for nearly two decades, is the central question the agreement leaves open.
Within hours of Trump's announcement, Hamas signaled it would not move first. Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official, stated plainly: "We will not take any steps regarding disarmament before Israel withdraws from the Gaza Strip." That demand directly contradicts the agreement's phased structure, which requires disarmament to precede withdrawal.
AP News reported that Hamas has also conditioned full disarmament on the creation of a Palestinian state, a political demand that goes well beyond the scope of the current agreement and would require a separate, far more complex negotiation. The deal's guarantors include the United States, Turkey, Egypt, and Qatar. Israel was consulted at every step but is not a signatory.
That distinction matters. Israel's absence from the formal agreement means the deal's enforcement depends on the guarantor nations and the ISF, not on direct Israeli-Hamas obligations. Trump's diplomatic achievement in reaching this point is significant, but the gap between an announced framework and verified disarmament on the ground remains wide.
The president has shown he can move the diplomatic needle in ways his predecessors could not. His decision earlier this year to declare that Netanyahu would not face arrest on U.S. soil demonstrated a willingness to act decisively on Israel's behalf, and his personal lobbying of foreign leaders has produced concrete results, including the release of an underground church pastor from Chinese detention after direct intervention with Xi Jinping.
An unnamed U.S. official, quoted by The Western Journal, acknowledged Israel's doubts but argued the deal's structure accounts for them:
"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."
The "conditions-based" framing is the administration's answer to the trust deficit. Israel does not have to take Hamas at its word. It does not withdraw behind the so-called yellow line, the demarcation that has divided Gaza since a peace framework was announced last October, until disarmament benchmarks are met. If Hamas stalls, Israel stays.
But Israeli officials have reason for caution beyond general distrust. An October 2025 social media post from the Mossad Commentary account on X stated that Israel had expanded its area of control in Gaza beyond the yellow line following "repeated Hamas ceasefire violations and ongoing deception over the bodies of fallen hostages." That history of broken commitments is the backdrop against which Israeli leaders are evaluating the new agreement.
Hamas had already dismantled its own government in Gaza to make way for the NCAG, the Washington Examiner reported, a step the Board of Peace required before moving forward. That concession is not trivial, Hamas voluntarily dissolving its administrative apparatus removes one layer of its grip on the territory. But administrative dissolution and military disarmament are two different things. The weapons, the tunnels, and the fighters remain.
The timeline for full disarmament, 200 to 350 days, means this agreement will be tested daily for the better part of a year. A senior U.S. official told Axios that implementation would begin "in the coming weeks," but no specific start date has been set. The phased approach means each stage must be completed and verified before the next begins. Heavy weapons come first, followed by light arms, followed by tunnel disclosure and destruction.
Just The News noted that the agreement is considered a major milestone in Trump's 20-Point Plan, with the president himself writing on Truth Social: "CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL ON THIS AMAZING DEVELOPMENT, THAT EVERYBODY SAID COULD NEVER BE ACHIEVED!"
The Board of Peace, an entity whose precise composition and authority have not been publicly detailed, sits at the center of the framework. Trump chairs it, and it brokered the agreement with the help of the three mediator nations. But its enforcement mechanisms, staffing, and legal standing remain unclear. For a deal of this magnitude, those details will matter enormously once implementation begins and disputes inevitably arise.
The ISF, led by a two-star Special Forces general, will be the primary enforcement presence on the ground. It will work alongside the new Palestinian police force, a force that does not yet exist in its planned form. Building a credible security apparatus from scratch in a territory that has been governed by an armed militia for nearly twenty years is a task that has defeated international efforts before, from Kosovo to Afghanistan. The administration's confidence that this time will be different rests on the conditions-based structure and the leverage of continued Israeli military presence.
Trump's broader approach to the presidency has been defined by this kind of ambitious, high-stakes action. Whether flying the new Air Force One for the first time or forcing a New York City mayor to abandon a politically motivated pledge, this administration has shown a pattern of setting large goals and using direct pressure to reach them. The Hamas disarmament deal is the most consequential test of that approach yet.
Several critical details remain unresolved. The agreement does not appear to address what happens if Hamas fighters refuse to comply individually, even if the organization's leadership has formally agreed. It does not specify what role, if any, the Palestinian Authority will play under the new NCAG structure. And Hamas's public demand for a Palestinian state as a precondition for full disarmament introduces a political variable the agreement's military framework was not designed to resolve.
The format of the agreement itself is also unclear. No signed treaty or formal document has been published. Whether this is a binding international agreement, a framework understanding, or something in between will shape how enforceable its terms prove to be.
None of that diminishes what Trump accomplished in reaching this point. Getting Hamas to agree to any disarmament text, even one the group is already hedging on, is further than any previous administration got. The 20-Point Plan has produced a concrete framework where decades of peace processes produced only talking points.
The question now is whether the agreement survives contact with the reality on the ground in Gaza. Announcements are easy. Disarmament is hard. And the people who will bear the consequences of failure are not the diplomats or the mediators, they are the Israeli families who have buried hostages and the Palestinian civilians who have lived under Hamas's rule for a generation.
