The Trump-backed Board of Peace is weighing a major change to its Gaza disarmament plan, according to a source familiar with the talks who spoke to The Times of Israel on Monday. Instead of the current phased approach, in which Hamas surrenders weapons sector by sector as Israeli forces make corresponding withdrawals, the panel is considering a wholesale option: Hamas would hand over all its weapons at once, and only then would Israeli troops pull back to Gaza’s perimeter. The source cautioned that the phased framework has not been abandoned, though the wholesale option is under active consideration.
The original roadmap, accepted by Hamas on July 30, divided the roughly 47 percent of Gaza still under Hamas’s control into five sectors for demilitarization. Israel has separately claimed to control 60 to 70 percent of the Strip, though the source said troops have not actually redeployed to match that claim, leaving the operative baseline unchanged.
Netanyahu has rejected the phased framework, insisting Israel will not withdraw until Hamas is completely disarmed, and an Israeli official said the dispute remained unresolved after he met Kushner in Jerusalem on August 17. A wholesale framework would require fresh Hamas approval, risking the buy-in the Board of Peace spent months securing for the phased version. The shift would also move the roadmap from reciprocal, incremental sequencing to a single all-or-nothing threshold — closer to Netanyahu’s position, but one that gives Israel a ready justification for keeping troops in Gaza indefinitely if disarmament is judged incomplete.
