Hamas has partially accepted proposals presented by mediators to push forward President Donald Trump's Gaza plan. Now it must wait to see if the US and Israel will see them as the basis for renewed negotiations to end the conflict in the Palestinian territory.
The agreement between Hamas and the mediators from Egypt, Turkey and Qatar came at the end of a week of intense consultations in Cairo, first among officials from Hamas and seven other Palestinian groups and then between the eight groups and the mediators.
What has been agreed?
A “Palestinian party” yet to be identified will carry out an initial inventory of Hamas's weapons. That party will then take delivery of the arms as well as detailed maps of Hamas's underground tunnels and the locations of its weapon manufacturing facilities, Palestinian sources said.
The transfer and storage of the weapons will be supervised by representatives of the mediators and the International Stabilisation Force, a UN-sanctioned outfit which has yet to be fully formed and deployed in Gaza to maintain security.
In return, Israel must announce a timeline for its withdrawal from Gaza in tandem with Hamas's disarmament. The proposal is that in return for the group laying down arms, Israel will also allow adequate humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, and allow entry to the Palestinian technocrats mandated to run the strip's day-to-day affairs.
What happens next?
The mediators are expecting Nickolay Mladenov, chief envoy of the Board of Peace set up under Mr Trump's plan to oversee Gaza's postwar future, to come to Egypt this week to be briefed on the new set of proposals, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The mediators will try to persuade Mr Mladenov to soften his view that nothing can move forward regarding the Trump plan unless Hamas and other groups in Gaza agree to surrender their weapons.
Already, Hamas and the other groups claim that the veteran Bulgarian diplomat is biased in favour of Israel and demand that he adopts a more understanding approach towards them.
What are the challenges?
They are many.
Chief among them is that Hamas may not have the will or the desire to give up its weapons. Why? Because that would run against the right of armed resistance to occupation which is enshrined in international law and cherished by the group. Also because Hamas without its weapons could be seen as easy prey to its enemies inside Gaza, such as Israeli-backed militias.
Moreover, Hamas, according to the sources, has little or no trust in Israel's commitment to any deal. It is convinced, for example, that Israel will go after each of its leaders and members of its military wing regardless of what arrangement is made on the weapons or what deal is struck to end the conflict.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's assertion that his military will occupy 70 per cent of Gaza has given credence to Hamas's worst fears. That nearly 900 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes since a US-sponsored ceasefire last October paused two years of war in Gaza gives added justification to Hamas's misgivings about dealing with Israel.
Besides Hamas, the militant Islamic Jihad group in Gaza, which is much closer to Iran than the former, has reluctantly agreed to the mediators' proposals, and will be the first to opt out of any deal if Israel does not honour its obligations. If this happens, the whole deal will crumble and the way back to hostilities will be wide open.
What do the US and Israel think?
The Trump administration is deeply distracted by its negotiations with Iran to end their war, which began in late February, as well as dealing with growing opposition at home to its continuation and the economic fallout.
The midterm elections that the Mr Trump's Republicans face later this year are deepening his administration's predicament. The unpopular war is making the loss of the party's majority in both houses of the US Congress a real possibility.
Iran's insistence that any deal with the US includes provisions to safeguard its regional proxies – Hamas, Lebanon's Hezbollah, Yemen's Houthis and Iraq's militias – complicates the negotiations with the US. It also casts a dark shadow on the mediators' efforts to get the Gaza plan moving forward.
A deal that includes Tehran's allies will almost certainly anger an increasingly belligerent Israel, which is determined to crush them as it continues to use its military might to reshape the region to its advantage. Rejecting the deal outright is a real possibility given Mr Netanyahu's track record of ignoring Washington's counsel when it disagrees with his policy goals.
What does this mean for Gaza?
Without a deal that puts the Trump plan back on track, Gaza's estimated 2.3 million residents face a future of even greater hardship than they have suffered since the war broke out in October 2023.
For example, if Israel makes good on Mr Netanyahu's vow to take over 70 per cent of Gaza, more Palestinians will be squeezed into a narrow strip that hugs the enclave's Mediterranean coastline. The Israeli military, which now occupies 10 per cent more territory than is stated under the Trump plan, would control the east and north of the strip.
The overcrowding will force nearly the entire population to live in tents, damaged buildings or jammed into the precious few housing units that have survived years of relentless bombing by Israel.
It will be a life without the usual amenities, appropriate health care or education. And, much more importantly, it will be a life fraught with despair so deep that people will consider packing up and leaving in search of an ordinary life elsewhere.
That is exactly what Mr Netanyahu's government – the most right-wing in Israel's history – wants, publicly advocates and deceivingly terms voluntary relocation.
