World
Gaza mediators to resume Hamas disarmament talks in Egypt looking to unblock impasse
Gaza mediators were set to renew disarmament talks with Hamas in Egypt on Thursday and were considering alternatives to US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan for ending the Gaza war, two Arab diplomats involved in the process told The Times of Israel.
The talks have largely hit a wall, with Hamas refusing to accept the Board of Peace’s disarmament proposal, arguing that Israel should first be held to the terms of the first phase.
Both Israel and Hamas have accused each other of repeated violations of the ceasefire that ended two years of devastating warfare. Hamas is refusing to disarm, while Israel has continued carrying out near-daily strikes throughout Gaza since the ceasefire, justifying them by saying it is striking “imminent” threats to its forces.
While the US-led Board of Peace tasked with overseeing the postwar management of Gaza has not given up completely on the possibility that talks with Hamas might go somewhere after months of little progress, the panel was increasingly considering alternatives to Trump’s plan, the two diplomats said.
Most prominent of those alternatives are ones that would see reconstruction allowed to begin in Gaza areas still occupied by Israel. Those parts were supposed to make up some 53% of the Strip, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week that he’d ordered troops to expand that to 70%, squeezing some 2 million Palestinians, mostly living in tents, into what is left of the war-ravaged Strip.
The idea of the alternative proposal was to encourage Palestinians to move outside of Hamas-controlled areas by providing temporary housing, but it’s unclear whether Gazans will want to live under Israeli occupation and whether Hamas will try to block those people from doing so.
The model was previously shelved by the Trump administration after it faced pushback from potential donor countries concerned that it would lead to the permanent division of the Gaza Strip. But with Hamas barely budging in disarmament talks, ideas once dismissed have been brought back to the fore, one of the Arab diplomats said.
Another issue still dragging out the talks has been Hamas’s leadership elections — an opaque process that has been taking place for over a month. Hamas has argued that no final decision on disarmament can be made before a new leader of the group has been selected.
The race is seen as a close contest between the more Gaza-connected Khalil al-Hayya and the more Qatar-connected Khaled Mashaal.
Both are hardliners, but Mashaal is seen as willing to take more practical steps to preserve Hamas as a political entity in the long-run, while Hayya wants Hamas to remain a dominant force in Gaza, rather than entering a period of dormancy while the technocratic National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) takes over civil affairs in the Strip.
The NCAG has yet to enter Gaza since its establishment in January, with the Board of Peace preferring to resolve the disarmament issue first.
In May, a document obtained by The Times of Israel showed that the Board of Peace won’t hold Israel to the terms of the ceasefire if Hamas does not accept the international panel’s framework for the terror group’s disarmament.
While the Board of Peace’s High Representative for Gaza, Nickolay Mladenov, warned that refusal from Hamas to disarm could lead to the resumption of the war, he went much further in the document, and said that Israel would not be expected to halt attacks in Gaza or ensure humanitarian aid enters the Strip.
In Gaza last week, Israel killed the newly appointed head of the terror group’s military wing, Mohammed Odeh, after he had assumed the top role in Gaza just 11 days after Israel assassinated his predecessor, Izz al-Din al-Haddad, earlier in May.
