Implementation of the deal to bring peace to Gaza announced by U.S. President Donald Trump will depend on Israel first meeting its commitments under an agreement reached last year, a senior Hamas official told Reuters on Friday.
In a post on his Truth Social platform on Thursday, 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.
The announcement followed months of faltering efforts to keep the ceasefire agreement reached last year in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on track and it was not immediately clear how strongly either Hamas or Israel stood behind it.
Within hours, Gaza medical authorities said several Palestinians had been wounded in an Israeli airstrike in the enclave. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Ghazi Hamad, a Hamas official involved in the negotiations, said the group was ready to accept an agreement he said was “difficult and painful”.
But he avoided using the term disarmament and said the agreement was a “comprehensive framework” that would depend on Israel implementing the first phase of the Sharm el-Sheikh agreement.
Under that agreement, he said Israel was 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 for storage by 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.
On Tuesday, Trump met in Washington with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces an election in October in which he may need the support of right-wing parties that have rejected previous deals in Gaza.
On Thursday, an Israeli political source said Israel would not agree to withdraw behind the so-called Yellow Line before Hamas is disarmed and the Gaza Strip is demilitarized.
Previous attempts to reach an agreement have foundered amid mutual suspicion and each side’s insistence that the other must move first.
The planned oversight body for Gaza, NCAG, issued a statement welcoming “the progress announced yesterday regarding the roadmap and the opening of a path toward beginning its implementation”. It said it was ready to assume its responsibilities, while Germany, a major donor, said it would do its part to help the agreement.
Gazans, still struggling with basic survival after the Israeli military campaign in response to the deadly 2023 Hamas attack on Israel devastated the enclave, remained sceptical.
Inside a tent encampment in Gaza City, where women were busy filling plastic jerrycans with water, displaced Palestinians urged Trump to compel Israel to abide by the agreement.
“You Trump, you should start it from your end, ceasefire, stop the assassinations and complete the Israeli army’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip,” said Samir Ayad, 60.
“We are not seeing any agreement at all, nothing from what he (Trump) is saying,” he told Reuters.
(Reuters)
