Earlier this week, Hamas formally dissolved its government in Gaza, presenting the decision as a major concession intended to remove one of the primary obstacles to advancing the ceasefire agreement with Israel and launching Gaza’s long-delayed reconstruction.
The announcement, made on Monday by Gaza’s Government Media Office, marks Hamas’s clearest declaration yet that it is prepared to step aside from civilian governance and hand it over to the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), an ostensibly apolitical committee of Palestinian technocrats overseen by Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” and tasked with overseeing civilian affairs in the Strip as part of the U.S. President’s 20-point plan.
In doing so, Hamas is throwing the ball in the other side’s court — namely, the U.S., the NCAG, and the Board of Peace — depriving Israel of what it portrays as its pretexts for delaying reconstruction. But notably absent from Monday’s announcement was any mention of Hamas’s disarmament, the key condition that Israel has placed for its continued phased withdrawal from Gaza and allowing the entry of reconstruction materials and aid into the Strip.
Since the ceasefire agreement was signed in October of last year, Israel withdrew to the so-called “Yellow Line” that cut Gaza roughly in half, with the remaining half of the Strip under Hamas’s control. According to the terms of Trump’s 20-point plan, Israel was supposed to allow the entry of aid and mobile homes during the first phase of the ceasefire, and to subsequently withdraw from more territory in the Strip as the ceasefire progressed into its later phases. But Israel has reneged on its obligations in the ceasefire’s first phase, and has progressively expanded the Yellow Line to seize even more territory in Gaza, now encompassing well over 65% of the Strip. But the linchpin of its refusal to honor the ceasefire’s terms has been the issue of Hamas’s disarmament.
Over the past several months, Hamas’s ongoing negotiations with mediators and officials from the Board of Peace have revolved around this issue, with the Board’s High Representative, Nickolay Mladenov echoing Israel’s maximalist demands for total disarmament ahead of any entry of aid or reconstruction materials, let alone withdrawal from more territory. Hamas has called Mladenov’s terms “the occupation’s conditions,” calling into question the supposed neutrality of the Board of Peace.
Following Monday’s announcement, Mladenov doubled down on these “outstanding implementation provisions” and reiterated that reconstruction can only begin after they are met. As for the technocratic committee, NCAG chairman Ali Shaath, who, alongside the rest of the committee, is still in Cairo, said the committee would only enter Gaza under specific conditions: “one authority, one law, one weapon.” This was the same formulation used by the Board of Peace, which stated that all weapons must be consolidated “under the control of the NCAG.”
The Board’s statement contradicts the original formulation of the NCAG as a purely administrative body without any involvement in security, a task that would supposedly be taken up by a prospective International Stabilization Force from member countries of the Board. But this formulation was later unilaterally revised by the Board in a 12-point document presented to Hamas in March, which envisioned an eight-month period in which Hamas would be compelled to surrender over its arms to the NCAG, which would have its own police force authorized to carry weapons.
Palestinian Authority, Israel accuse Hamas of ‘deception’
During the press conference announcing the dissolution of the Government Emergency Committee that was tasked with administering Gaza during the war, Government Media Office spokesperson Ismail al-Thawabta said that only essential services would continue during what he described as a period of “administrative transition.”
Al-Thawabta stressed that only technical and professional civil servants would remain in their posts to prevent a vacuum in the provision of services. He reiterated that those same civil servants would be fully prepared to work under the authority of the NCAG once it arrives in Gaza.
Until then, the Government Media Office said that Dr. Abdel Hadi al-Agha, who previously served in the Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs under the Hamas government, has been tasked with supervising a temporary administrative body responsible for maintaining essential services.
This is what prompted officials in the Palestinian Authority (PA) to dismiss the move. Mahmoud al-Habbash, a high-ranking PA official and an adviser to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, called the dissolution of the Hamas government “meaningless” and an attempt to “deceive” and “buy time,” asserting that governmental functions in Gaza are just being transferred from one Hamas-affiliated body to another.
Hamas rejected the criticism, with spokesperson Hazem Qassem maintaining that the movement has consistently reiterated that it has no desire to govern Gaza after the war, insisting that dissolving the government demonstrates that commitment in practice.
Qassem also accused PA officials of echoing Israeli talking points in their criticism of the decision. “It’s unfamiliar to see PA leaders using the same terms as some Israeli political figures describing the step Hamas took,” Qassem said.
The dismissal of the Hamas announcement by Israeli officials was widespread. Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Sa’ar characterized it as a “trick” by Hamas “designed to prevent its own disarmament.” Sa’ar said that Hamas seeks to “replicate the ‘Hezbollah model’ in Gaza,” in which a technocratic administration would oversee services, and Hamas “would remain the dominant military force” in the Strip.
The result is the Israel is now attempting to counter Hamas’s maneuver by downplaying its significance and doubling down on its maximalist demands of full disarmament, down to the last rifle and pistol, as a precondition for reconstruction and withdrawal. But as several analysts have pointed out, such demands are not only unreasonable but also impractical, leading to the question of whether these conditions are intended to prolong Israel’s continued presence in Gaza indefinitely.
Demanding the impossible is the point
In response to the argument that Hamas has thrown the ball in Israel’s court, Gaza-based political analyst Ribhi al-Jadali says that “Israel is not playing on that court in the first place.”
Since the start of the war, Jadali says, Hamas’s governance of Gaza has never been Israel’s core objective. Rather, it is “a political talking point, invoked at one point in time and replaced with another slogan once the old one loses credibility.”
The most consistent of these slogans has been disarmament. It has been particularly useful for Israel because it is so ill-defined, and because the majority of Hamas’s rocket arsenal, which poses the most immediate military threat to Israel, has been dismantled. All that remains to Hamas are light weapons such as AK-47s and unexploded Israeli ordnance that could potentially be made into IEDs in the future. That is why Hamas has, at various points since the start of the ceasefire, signaled willingness to “decommission,” “freeze,” or otherwise reduce or conceal its remaining weapons. Hamas has suggested a phased approach in exchange for reconstruction and withdrawal, which would allow Hamas to retain “light weapons” to ensure security and self-defense in the context of Israeli-backed armed militias sowing chaos throughout the Strip, which has been met with Israeli rejection.
Muhammad Shehadeh, an analyst from Gaza and a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, has advocated for a framework of decommissioning arms based on the model of Northern Ireland, where surrender or disarmament were not prerequisites for peace but rather outcomes of it. In the interim, both the Irish Republican Army and the Ulster Volunteer Force were required to store away their weapons in depots “with a strict policy of not using or displaying them,” so that they acted as “an insurance card or guarantee that the 1998 Good Friday Agreement would be fulfilled.”
In contrast, Shehadeh argues that the conditions delivered by Mladenov to Hamas in recent months are “Israel-aligned,” describing them as appearing to “be designed to be impossible to accept.” The purpose, Shehadeh maintains, is to tank the ceasefire and allow the genocide in Gaza to resume.
For al-Jadali, Israel’s true objective has been clear from the start, part of “a broader project aimed at reshaping Gaza’s demographic and political reality by reducing the Palestinian presence there, pushing as many residents as possible to leave.”
That is why Israel’s demands have been so maximalist, insisting that disarmament be implemented in full before any meaningful withdrawal or reconstruction, and defining disarmament as encompassing everything from rifles to rockets to IEDs to tunnel networks.
As Shehadeh has pointed out, “the process of collecting all light firearms in Gaza is complex and near impossible to verify,” given the ubiquity of light arms across Gaza. These weapons are owned by numerous and diverse actors in the Strip, including tribes, clans, other armed factions, regular civilians, and Israeli-backed militias that continue to sow chaos across Gaza and launch attacks against Hamas members.
“Israel can always claim it has intelligence about an armed cell left behind or some AK-47s not yet collected, and use that as an excuse to maintain its occupation of Gaza,” Shehadeh writes.
Al-Jadali echoes a similar sentiment. “Israel will continue searching for new justifications as long as its broader objectives remain unmet,” he says. “These justifications may change, but the objective remains the same.”
That objective is the total control of Gaza and the expulsion of as many of its people as possible.
Tareq S. Hajjaj
Tareq S. Hajjaj is the Gaza Correspondent for Mondoweiss and a member of the Palestinian Writers Union. Follow him on Twitter/X at @Tareqshajjaj.
