Trump says Hamas agreed to next phase of Gaza peace deal, including disarmament

President Donald Trump said Hamas has accepted a new stage of a Gaza peace arrangement that would require the group to give up its weapons, describing the development as a major advance in efforts to move the conflict toward a more durable settlement. The announcement, made Thursday evening, placed disarmament at the center of the proposed next phase and linked Hamas’ position to work by an international body Trump calls the Board of Peace.

Trump made the claim in a post on Truth Social. He portrayed the proposed accord as an unprecedented commitment to remove the weapons held by Hamas and other armed organizations operating in Gaza. The president also said the step could strengthen both long-term security and the prospects for peace, framing it as an important moment rather than a limited procedural move.

U.S. officials and representatives of the Board of Peace told reporters that Hamas had sent its acceptance through mediators. According to those officials, the group agreed to the final wording of the plan, including provisions for taking its arms out of service. That account indicates that indirect contacts, rather than a public joint appearance or direct announcement by Hamas, were used to convey the group’s position.

The reported agreement concerns what Trump described as the deal’s next stage, not simply a broad statement of intent. Its central test will therefore be whether acceptance of the text can be turned into a workable process in Gaza. Publicly available details cited in the announcement did not set out a timetable, identify how weapons would be collected or removed, or explain what verification system would be used to judge compliance. They also did not describe the order in which any disarmament steps would occur, what benchmarks would apply, or how differences over the plan’s interpretation would be addressed.

Disarmament is among the most consequential commitments that can appear in a post-conflict or peace framework because it concerns the ability of armed groups to operate after an agreement is reached. In this case, the stated objective extends beyond Hamas to other armed factions in Gaza. That wider scope could make the proposal more significant if carried out, but it also means implementation would depend on more actors than Hamas alone. A declaration of acceptance and the practical removal of weapons are separate matters, which makes the details of execution as important as the language of the accord.

The Board of Peace featured prominently in Trump’s description, suggesting that the administration sees an international mechanism as part of the effort to carry the plan forward. Officials described it alongside the United States when discussing Hamas’ message through mediators. Even so, the information released Thursday left unanswered questions about the board’s membership, authority, responsibilities and role in any future monitoring of the commitments described by Trump. Its involvement may be intended to give the next phase an international structure, but the precise form of that structure was not outlined.

Trump’s language emphasized the potential historic importance of the arrangement, while the official account focused more narrowly on Hamas’ acceptance of the plan’s final text. Those two descriptions point in the same direction but reflect different stages of diplomacy: political declarations can signal momentum, whereas a disarmament pledge ultimately requires detailed arrangements and observable follow-through. Neither the president’s post nor the officials’ comments described those operational steps. That gap does not negate the reported agreement, but it limits how much can be known about its immediate effect from the announcement alone.

What happens next will be closely watched by parties involved in the Gaza process, especially whether mediators can translate the reported acceptance into implementation. The immediate questions are whether all relevant armed groups will be covered, how the decommissioning commitment would be defined, and what role the United States and the Board of Peace would play after the agreement is accepted. Further clarification from Hamas, the mediators or the board could show whether there is a shared understanding of the final text. For now, the announcement establishes a claimed commitment to a new phase; the durability of that claim will rest on the steps that follow.

Source: CBS World