Muhammad Shehada
+972 Magazine / April 29, 2026
Israel’s continued attacks and aid restrictions made a mockery of the ceasefire. Now it is conditioning withdrawal on Hamas giving up every last weapon.
In a bombed-out, multi-story building in the Tal al-Hawa neighbourhood of Gaza City, my friend Anas, his wife, and their 3-year-old daughter are sheltering in a first-floor apartment with no doors or windows. Most of the walls are either fully or partially collapsed along with a large part of the living room’s ceiling. In the center of the floor, there is a deep hole carved out by an unexploded 2000-pound Israeli bomb.
The building is riddled with bullet holes. The top two floors were repeatedly bombed and shelled by Israeli tanks and drones, and the ground floor has been almost completely destroyed. The staircase no longer connects to the upper three floors, leaving the building at risk of collapsing at any moment. For now, it remains standing amid a sea of fully flattened buildings.
There is no electricity, no running water, and no sewage or functioning bathrooms. At night, Anas sleeps with one eye open to look out for rats and mice that could bite his daughter. Flies, mosquitoes, and cockroaches also roam the building, nesting in destroyed sewage lines and under the vast amounts of rubble. During the day, Anas and his wife spend their time looking for work or humanitarian aid; their successes are painfully rare, and barely enough to keep them alive.
All day long, they are haunted by the non-stop buzzing of Israeli drones flying overhead ready to shoot to kill, as well as the sounds of explosions, machine guns, and demolition work taking place behind the “Yellow Line” — the expanding boundary marking Israel’s direct occupation of more than half of Gaza’s territory, which it is systematically flattening.
This is actually the life of one of Gaza’s luckier families, for at least they have a roof over their heads. More than six months after the so-called “ceasefire” was signed, most Palestinians in the Strip are still living in flimsy plastic tents that drown when it rains, trap the suffocating heat inside when the sun shines too brightly, and risk being blown away by moderate winds.
My friends, family, and colleagues on the ground have been willing to put up with this so long as they believed it to be a temporary ordeal on the road toward a better future. Yet they are increasingly internalizing the grim reality that there is no end in sight to the deliberately unliveable conditions Israel has imposed on Gaza.
With the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran consuming global media attention and diplomatic energy and effectively halting President Trump’s “Gaza peace plan,” the besieged enclave has been all but removed from the world’s agenda — deprioritized by Western and regional governments, and seldom mentioned in mainstream media anymore. But behind the scenes, talks have continued on the issue of Hamas’ disarmament.
Both the Israeli government and the Trump administration have consistently presented this issue as the primary sticking point to any further Israeli withdrawal, obscuring the fact that Israel itself has failed to uphold its central commitments under the agreement. And in recent weeks, the man tasked with overseeing the disarmament process has issued new Israel-aligned demands of Hamas that appear designed to be impossible to accept, thus deliberately torpedoing the ceasefire and allowing Israel to continue its genocide unabated.
From broken promises to total disarmament
Under phase one of the ceasefire, Hamas agreed to release all remaining Israeli hostages in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners, the withdrawal of Israeli forces to the Yellow Line, and an immediate end to “all military operations.”
After this, Israel was supposed to facilitate the entry into Gaza of an International Stabilization Force (ISF) and the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), a minimum of 600 aid trucks per day, and 200,000 tents along with 60,000 temporary homes. From there, negotiations toward phase two of the ceasefire — which includes further Israeli withdrawals and the decommissioning of Hamas’ weapons — were supposed to begin.
Yet six months later, Israel has still not fulfilled its side of the bargain.
Since the ceasefire started, the Israeli army has killed over 750 Palestinians; continued to restrict the flow of aid; bombed Gaza by land, air, and sea; prevented the entry of the NCAG; refused to allow any entry of temporary homes; and limited even the entry of tents under the ridiculous pretext that Hamas could recycle the little amount of aluminium into weapons, despite Israel’s own intelligence showing that Hamas is not rearming. (Israel has simultaneously been allowing canned food into Gaza, which Hamas could equally recycle into weapons if it wished to.)
Nevertheless, amid the fog of the Iran war, Israel is pushing a simple trick: a maximalist proposal for the full and unilateral disarmament of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza — with no guarantees or timeframe for Israeli withdrawal, and without which there would be no reconstruction in the enclave. Now, this has become the official demand of the man in charge of the negotiations.
The proposal was delivered to Hamas in Cairo in mid-March by Nickolay Mladenov, the director-general of President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace and its High Representative for Gaza. Hamas has known Mladenov for over a decade from his former role as the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process between 2015 and 2020, meeting him regularly during his visits to Gaza to de-escalate tensions with Israel. This time around, however, Hamas leaders have been shocked by his conduct.
Hamas and other Palestinian factions (including Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) were invited to a March 14 meeting with Egyptian and Qatari mediators without being informed that Mladenov would attend; according to a Hamas leader present at the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, they were only told after arriving in the meeting room.
The Hamas leader claimed that Mladenov did not behave in the way the group had come to expect from his time as a UN diplomat. Speaking with a “condescending demeanour,” the source said, he presented an ultimatum that all Palestinian factions in Gaza should accept full disarmament of both heavy weapons and light firearms or risk a renewal of Israel’s onslaught.
He made the proposal orally rather than in a written paper, and demanded an immediate answer. Palestinian factions asked for more time for internal consultations, and he gave them a week. Mladenov, who presides over the NCAG, made it clear he would not allow the administrative body into Gaza until the Palestinian armed factions agree to his initiative.
Mladenov’s proposal, a copy of which (noted down by mediators) was reviewed by +972, entirely rewrites Trump’s plan. The proposal’s timeframe makes suspending Israeli attacks on Gaza contingent on Hamas and other Palestinian factions accepting the principle of full disarmament. Likewise, Mladenov made accepting full disarmament a prerequisite for the entry into Gaza of both the ISF and the NCAG, as well as of any temporary homes.
The plan also stipulates the full disarmament of both heavy and light weapons, and full dismantling of tunnels or other militant infrastructure in the 58 percent of Gaza currently controlled by the Israeli military, within 60 days. It demands that Hamas and other factions provide all information on the location of their infrastructure in those areas, all without any Israeli withdrawal or deployment of the ISF. During those 60 days, Palestinian factions are also required to halt all militant activities, including parades.
From day 30 to 90, “West Gaza,” currently controlled by Hamas, would also be “cleansed” of any “heavy” weapons. Palestinian factions would have to turn in all of their rockets, rifles, and explosive devices to the NCAG, and allow the full destruction of all tunnels and militant infrastructure — again without any Israeli withdrawal.
During the negotiations that preceded the October ceasefire, U.S. and Arab mediators had distinguished between “offensive weapons” that pose a threat to Israel, like rockets or tunnels crossing into Israel, and “defensive weapons” like firearms that could be used to repel an Israeli invasion but not attack Israel from inside Gaza.
Mladenov’s proposal introduced the terms “heavy” and “personal” weapons. All “heavy” weapons — which includes even AK-47s and Kalashnikovs — would have to be turned in by day 90, while the Israeli military is still in control of 58 percent of Gaza and could invade much of the rest in minutes.
From day 91-250, the NCAG’s security forces would register and collect all “personal weapons,” and only once an investigative committee verifies that Gaza is completely free of any weapons whatsoever — a very elusive process — would Israel make a limited and “gradual” withdrawal over an undefined period of time to the “Red Line” that would still leave it in control of about 38 percent of Gaza.
Rubble removal and reconstruction under Mladenov’s proposal would only begin on day 251. From that day, Israel would begin to withdraw toward a “security perimeter” that would leave it in control of 20 percent of Gaza, including much of the enclave’s agricultural lands. Israel would stay there indefinitely until “Gaza is properly secure from any resurgent terror threat,” an undefined sentence that could include “deradicalization” as a prerequisite.
A formula for permanent control
The Palestinian factions were outraged by Mladenov’s proposal. Some told the mediators they would rather not deal with him in future talks, arguing that he was “overstepping” his role as a coordinator between the NCAG and the Board of Peace, according to a Hamas source. In a post on X, senior Hamas official Basem Naim described Mladenov as “more royalist than the king” (referring to the fact that he has fully adopted Israel’s position) and accused him of “wanting to achieve [his] own ends at the expense of our people and their legitimate rights, to please the Americans and Israelis.”
Two Hamas leaders who spoke on the condition of anonymity told me they consider this proposal to be “catastrophic” and a trick by Netanyahu to either resume the war or keep Gaza at a standstill. As such, after receiving an extension on the original one-week ultimatum, Hamas delivered its response to Mladenov in mid-April: before any steps toward disarmament, Israel must first fulfill all its obligations under phase one of the ceasefire agreement.
Hamas and other Palestinian factions allege that if they were to agree to Mladenov’s plan, they would simply make Israel’s plan to complete its genocide easier. Including rifles in the first phase of disarmament means Palestinian factions would be unable to mount any insurgency or resistance; as one Hamas leader told me, “If Netanyahu changes his mind tomorrow because of the [upcoming] elections and decides to kick the ISF out and retake Gaza, he would be able to do it in less than 10 minutes.”
Palestinian factions also believe that disarming Gaza while Israeli forces are still occupying large parts of the Strip would further encourage Israel’s settler movement and far-right government to start building settlements in the areas controlled by the military. Armed settlers could then storm any part of Gaza and launch pogroms as they do in the West Bank almost daily.
Equally concerning for Palestinian factions is that the Mladenov plan gives a monopoly on violence in Gaza to the NCAG rather than the Palestinian Authority (PA) or Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which means security forces on the ground would answer to Mladenov and Trump instead of any Palestinian body.
The United Kingdom, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia have been pushing for the Northern Ireland model to be the basis of decommissioning — rather than disarmament — in Gaza. There, decommissioning meant that the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) didn’t have to surrender or disarm as a prerequisite to peace; instead, they locked up their weapons in depots with a strict policy of not using or displaying them. The weapons then acted as the insurance card or guarantee that the 1998 Good Friday Agreement would be fulfilled.
For instance, in 2001, the IRA suspended its decommissioning process, saying that the British government had reneged on pulling troops out of Northern Ireland. It took until 2005 for the IRA to disarm, and until 2009 for the UVF to follow suit.
This sequencing was in fact central to the success of the process. As former Irish president Bertie Ahern, who oversaw the IRA’s decommissioning, later emphasized, “decommissioning ultimately came to be framed not as a pre-condition to participation in talks, but as a necessary outcome.”
Hamas, like the IRA, views its weapons as the only guarantee of Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. The group has previously agreed to lock those weapons up in warehouses and said that NCAG security forces can shoot or detain any member who uses or even shows a weapon publicly. The weapons would remain locked up for five to 10 years, or even indefinitely, and would be fully destroyed as the outcome of peace rather than a precondition.
Hamas would likely try to retain as much of its arsenal as possible to preserve its leverage, internal cohesion, and regional standing. Yet under mounting pressure from Arab states and amid deep unpopularity within Gaza, it would almost certainly accept a Northern Ireland-style decommissioning framework as a way to sidestep Israel’s maximalist demands for total surrender.
Netanyahu, however, has insisted that disarmament means the immediate surrender and destruction of 60,000 light firearms in Gaza.
The United Arab Emirates has also been pushing for the full and thorough disarmament of Gaza to ensure that Hamas — which it considers a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood — has no chance of regaining or remaining in power and to turn the group into a cautionary tale for advocates of resistance in the region. The Emiratis also believe it would deal a blow to Iran’s Axis of Resistance.
But this demand is cynical. If Hamas rejects it, it means getting the blame for Gaza’s grim fate. But even if the group accepts it, the process of collecting all light firearms in Gaza is complex and near impossible to verify.
Several tribes and clans are armed, alongside several smaller, harder-line factions than Hamas. Additionally, during Israel’s genocide, light weaponry fell into the hands of criminals, gangs, or random individuals amid the chaos. Israel can always claim it has intelligence about an armed cell left behind or some AK-47s not yet collected, and use that as an excuse to maintain its occupation of Gaza.
In this situation, Mladenov wears three hats. In addition to his job as High Representative, he is a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an AIPAC-backed pro-Israel think tank. He is also the director general of the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy in the UAE.
Speaking anonymously, two sources close to the NCAG told +972 that Mladenov made NCAG commissioners “contractors” with the Anwar Gargash Academy, meaning they receive their salaries directly from it. Another source close to NCAG chief Ali Shaath said each NCAG commissioner receives about $18,000 per month as salary.
Despite this lucrative pay check, those commissioners are essentially a government in exile operating only on paper. More than 100 days after the NCAG’s creation, they remain in the dark even when it comes to the smallest details, such as where their offices would be or where they would live and sleep the night if they crossed into Gaza. Their legitimacy and popularity on the street are fast depleting.
For Gazans, meanwhile, Israel and its allies have transformed disarmament into a prerequisite for survival, demanding they hand over their only leverage while Israel’s tanks remain on their soil and its drones hum overhead. This is not a pathway to reconstruction; it is a trap dressed in diplomatic language, a formula for permanent subjugation where Palestinians must prove their absolute, verifiable defenselessness before Israel even pretends to withdraw.
Gaza’s suffering is not a negotiating chip; it is a crime. And until the world names it as such — without preconditions, without caveats, and without first asking the victims to surrender the last thing preventing their annihilation — Anas and his family, and thousands like them, will remain exactly where they are: trapped beneath an open sky, waiting for a justice that has learned their address but refuses to knock.
Muhammad Shehada is a Gazan writer and political analyst, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations
