For nearly a year, the international community insisted that there could be no future for the Gaza Strip unless Hamas was stripped of every weapon, every tunnel, every missile factory, and every military capability.
US President Donald J. Trump’s September 2025 peace plan was explicit: Gaza would be demilitarized, terrorist infrastructure destroyed, and weapons rendered permanently unusable.
Article 13 of Trump’s 20-point plan states:
“All military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt. There will be a process of demilitarization of Gaza under the supervision of independent monitors, which will include placing weapons permanently beyond use through an agreed process of decommissioning, and supported by an internationally funded buy back and reintegration program all verified by the independent monitors.”
Now, however, that clear objective appears to have been replaced by something radically different. Instead of eliminating Hamas’s arsenal, negotiators are discussing storing weapons, transferring them to another Palestinian party, and even allowing Hamas members to retain “personal firearms.”
The original goal of Trump’s peace plan was not to relocate Hamas’s arsenal. It was to eliminate it permanently. Replacing “demilitarization” with “storage” is a win for Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip.
The latest deal between Trump’s Board of Peace and Hamas, titled “A Roadmap for Completing the Implementation of President Trump’s Comprehensive Peace Plan in Gaza,” states:
“A process to decommission and store heavy weapons, military production sites, depots of weapons, and tunnels, shall begin after completing the remaining commitments under Sharm Sheikh Protocol, the entry of NCAG [National Committee for the Administration of Gaza] and deployment of ISF [International Stabilization Force].”
How did the promise of permanent demilitarization become a discussion about warehouses full of Hamas weapons? Weapons stored in warehouses remain weapons that function. Explosives stored today can be easily recovered tomorrow. Rocket factories that are preserved can resume production. Tunnels that are mapped rather than destroyed can be used again.
The issue has never been where Hamas keeps its weapons. The issue has always been Hamas having access them.
The assumption that the NCAG or ISF would be able to prevent terrorists from regaining control over the stored weapons is totally misleading. Even more disturbing is the new deal’s assertion that “no weapons shall be transferred or handed to Israel or non-Palestinian parties.”
Transferring weapons from one Palestinian group to another is not demilitarization.
Equally disturbing is the new roadmap’s conditioning of disarmament on an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip:
“This process [to decommission and store heavy weapons, military production sites, depots of weapons, and tunnels] shall be linked to an Israeli withdrawal, in phases, from the areas under its control in Gaza and the decommissioning of [Israel-backed] armed militias.”
Why should a terrorist organization that carried out the October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel be allowed to dictate the conditions of its own disarmament? No country fighting ISIS or al-Qaeda would first withdraw its forces and only then hope terrorists voluntarily surrender their weapons. Hamas should not be negotiating the terms of its defeat. It should be compelled to unconditionally surrender and disarm.
