Report: Hamas nearing agreement on handing its arms to new postwar Gaza security force

The Saudi-owned newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reports that talks in Cairo between Palestinian terror group Hamas and mediators regarding the US plan for postwar Gaza — Egypt, Qatar and Turkey — have in the last few days been nearing agreement on a proposal submitted by Board of Peace Gaza envoy Nikolay Mladenov regarding the second phase of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas.

According to the report, there is broad consensus between the parties on the wording of the proposal concerning weapons and disarmament. Rather than requiring Hamas and the other terror groups in Gaza to fully surrender their arms, to be removed from the Strip or destroyed, the proposal calls for the weapons to be retained in Gaza but transferred to the hands of Palestinian security forces linked to the yet-to-be-installed technocratic National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG). An agreement could be announced within days, the report says.

The report also says that the agreement would include the entry of the NCAG into the Strip and the deployment of international forces there.

Israel, Hamas and the mediators have been negotiating the terms of a ceasefire agreement for months. According to previous reports, Hamas had so far rejected Mladenov’s proposed language regarding the disarmament of Hamas.

Even if Hamas agrees to the proposal, the chances of it being implemented remain uncertain, given the group’s longstanding insistence on retaining its weapons and repeated statements by its leaders over the years that they would not relinquish them until a Palestinian state is established “from the river to the sea,” in place of the State of Israel.