Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups agreed to a plan that, if followed, would see the groups disarm and lose power in the Gaza Strip as long as Israel withdraws from the enclave, U.S. officials said.
The officials, speaking to reporters Thursday evening, said the agreement is the start of an indefinite, multiphase process to end Hamas’s rule in Gaza and rebuild the enclave. The officials acknowledged many challenges ahead, such as verifying the Palestinian groups’ compliance and ensuring that a skeptical Israeli government doesn’t scuttle any progress.
The announcement is the culmination of months of diplomacy between the U.S., Israel, Hamas and Middle East mediators, as well as the Board of Peace created by President Trump to oversee Gaza’s transition. But it is only the first step in a pathway laden with political and military traps.
“What the agreement says matters. What happens next matters even more. Implementation and verification have to be real,” Nickolay Mladenov , the board’s chairman, said in a social-media statement praising the agreement.
Trump was far more optimistic in his own social-media post minutes before the briefing. “Today, the Board of Peace reached a HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza. This is a monumental step toward lasting PEACE and SECURITY,” the president wrote.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas’s negotiating team, said the group agreed to place its weapons in a storage facility overseen by the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, a Palestinian-run technocratic group charged with the enclave’s political and security transition. “We didn’t say disarmament, we didn’t say handing over the weapons, and we didn’t agree on any Israeli involvement,” Hamad said, adding that the plan is contingent on Israel ending military operations in Gaza and allowing humanitarian aid in.
Egypt, which is hosting the latest talks between Israel and Hamas, didn’t explicitly mention that Hamas agreed to disarm in an official statement, noting instead “their agreement to the road map” and a future meeting in Cairo “to discuss implementation mechanisms and reaffirm the commitment of all parties to the terms of the agreement.”
There was no immediate comment from Israel.
Despite confusion over what Thursday’s agreement meant, officials said it does mark a new era after the war, which started when Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, launched a surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 Israelis and taking about 250 hostages. The Israeli military’s response has left about 70,000 Palestinians dead , said Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and military casualties.
The 15-point road map for ridding Hamas of its weapons and removing it from power is a product of last October’s Gaza peace deal backed by the United Nations. Under that agreement, after all the hostages held by Hamas were returned, militants seeking amnesty would decommission their weapons while agreeing to the “demilitarization of Gaza” overseen by independent monitors.
The road map is the Board of Peace’s attempt at turning that commitment into reality, seeking to develop an implementation schedule within two weeks.
A board official said each phase in the process would require independent verification before moving on to the next one. The officials said those phases included agreeing to the framework, the relinquishment of any government involvement, transferring weapons from the Gaza police force to another security entity, decommissioning heavy weapons and weapons depots, disarming individuals and identifying and destroying tunnels.
Hamas is also expected to hand over maps of its tunnels, weapons factories and depots, according to the draft of the agreement.
There are also provisions for the handover of civilian authorities from Hamas to the national committee. The Board of Peace official said the timelines for each phase will vary, and that different sectors of Gaza could be at different stages as well.
Hamas has been holding meetings with mediators in Egypt as well as representatives from the Board of Peace since Tuesday to complete the agreement. An Israeli team has also been present in the country since Wednesday to discuss the second phase of the agreement with the Egyptian mediators.
Mediators said Israel has yet to approve the agreement and talks with Hamas will continue in Egypt on Friday.
Write to Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com , Summer Said at summer.said@wsj.com and Philip Wegmann at philip.wegmann@wsj.com
