Israel must honour deal for Hamas disarmament - official

Implementation of the deal to bring peace to Gaza announced by US President Donald Trump will depend on Israel first meeting its commitments under an agreement reached last year, a senior Hamas official has said.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Mr Trump announced a "major milestone" towards ending the war in Gaza, saying his 'Board of Peace' had reached an agreement for the complete disarmament of Hamas and other armed groups.

Citing Hamas officials, media outlets have reported that Hamas has agreed to the plan, but the group has not officially commented.

Ghazi Hamad, a Hamas official involved in the negotiations, said the agreement was a "comprehensive framework" that went beyond the issue of disarmament and would depend on Israel implementing the first phase of an agreement hammered out last year in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Under that agreement, he said Israel is obliged to end its attacks in Gaza and withdraw its forces to where they stood in October, as well as increase the flow of goods and aid coming into the enclave.

Only then would Hamas agree to hand over its weapons to the new National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), the technocratic body set up to run the enclave.

"We insisted to the mediators that Israel must abide by the agreement," he said.

Yesterday, an Israeli official said Israel would not agree to withdraw behind the so-called Yellow Line before Hamas is disarmed and Gaza is demilitarised.

Hamas officials said that a committee established by Mr Trump's Board of Peace to govern Gaza would oversee the process of storing the Islamist movement's weapons.

The group said it expected mediators and the Board of Peace to ensure Israel complied with the deal's terms, which included Israel's withdrawal from Gaza.

Despite the October ceasefire, violence has continued in Gaza, with Israeli strikes killing at least four people, including two children yesterday, according to health officials.

Several Palestinians were also wounded in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza hours after Mr Trump announced the deal, Gaza medics said.

Focus now on implementation

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".

"Our focus now turns to implementation," the organisation wrote, adding the NCAG will "soon begin a phased transition toward full authority".

Mr Trump, in an earlier social media post, said that once Hamas's disarmament is complete, "Israeli forces will withdraw, and the International Stabilisation Force will work with a new Palestinian police force to take responsibility for Gaza being safe for its residents and its neighbours".

Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace's high representative for Gaza, said the deal "took months of very difficult negotiations".

"What happens next matters even more. Implementation and verification have to be real," Mr Mladenov wrote on X.

"Withdrawal must move in lockstep with decommissioning," he added.

Egypt's state-linked Al-Qahera News said early today that Egypt is set to host a meeting "soon" of the Gaza truce mediators, which also include the United States, Qatar and Turkey, focused on the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire plan.

'No exceptions'

Earlier, a diplomatic source said: "We continue to advance the implementation roadmap that offers a balanced and pragmatic path forward, with all weapons decommissioned and a phased transition of responsibilities taking place to hand over full authority to the technocratic government."

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak publicly on the matter, said there would be "no exceptions for certain weapons or certain people. One authority, one law, one weapon".

The roadmap, the source said, would create "a process for the elimination of all tunnels, depots of weapons and any weapons production facilities".

The source said a verification mechanism would ensure compliance by each side.

A Hamas source familiar with the talks earlier said that the movement was "awaiting the Israeli response to the amendments we recently submitted to the mediators".

The source said the amendments concerned two articles in the roadmap presented by the Board of Peace.

Regarding the article concerning weapons, the Hamas source said that "some points were removed, and alternatives were proposed".

Before the deal's announcement, an Israeli political source said that the proposed agreement did not "satisfactorily" address Israeli demands.

"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," the source said.

The source also said that "the issue of Gaza did not come up at all" in the meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mr Trump in Washington this week.

Meanwhile, the Middle East Director of the International Communities Organisation has said that the deal announced overnight is a very good development because people have been saying that Hamas will never agree to disarming.

'Hamas had little choice' - Expert

Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Dr Gershon Baskin of the International Communities Organisation said that the devil is in the detail, and the agreement has not been seen yet.

"Hamas had little choice and very little leverage," he said.

"Hamas was under enormous pressure from the mediators - Egypt, Qatar and Turkey - as well as from two million Gazans, who feel that they have been held as hostage to Hamas refusal to disarm, while Israel continues to occupy most of the Gaza Strip, encroaching into deeper zones when more than a thousand Gazans have been killed by Israel since the official end of the war.

"There will be disagreements in interpretation between Israel and Hamas," he said, adding that Israel is three months from elections and Mr Netanyahu was under a lot of pressure.

"He's not doing well in the polls, and he's unlikely to pick a fight with President Trump, who's his main calling card on his relationship with the US government."

However, he said that Mr Netanyahu will come under a lot of pressure from his base about the deal.

On whether there will be a cessation of Israeli military activity in Gaza, Mr Baskin said there will be "enormous American pressure" on Mr Netanyahu to stop the military activity there.