Who will disarm Hamas? The ceasefire will fail if Hamas is denounced but not disarmed.
Unless it’s asleep at the wheel, as it was on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel can defend itself when Hamas fires. Gazans can’t. There may be a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, but there is no ceasefire between Hamas and Gazans.
Public executions. Imprisonment underground without food and light. These are only the Hamas methods we know. The idea that a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will bring peace to Gaza is delusional — unless Hamas is disarmed.
Israel needs it.
Gazans need it more.
A civil war rages in Gaza between various terrorist factions on the one side and the various clans on the other. Who will win? Israel’s Lt. Col. Maurice Hirsch puts it plain: “Whoever is most violent will win. At the moment, it seems like Hamas, with its apparatus, is willing and is capable of being the most violent group without any kind of restriction.
“Unless the other groups are willing to fight and protect themselves with the same methods, it is going to be very difficult to resist Hamas.”
Israel gets it. The Gazans get it. Do the ceasefire negotiators get it? Do Trump, Vance, Rubio and Kushner get it? Does Turkey, Egypt, Qatar Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations get it? With all the tough talk from President Trump and Sec. of State Rubio about “obliterating” Hamas if it doesn’t disarm, here is the acid test: Volunteering for the new, vaunted, loosely defined, much hyped security force and governance authority in Gaza.
Let’s see if the ceasefire celebrants are actually willing to put their boots on the ground that Hamas controls.
If Arab nations do end up volunteering, they know they won’t succeed in rebuilding Gaza unless they disarm Hamas — a violent process (ask Israel). If they don’t volunteer, well, that will speak for itself. The Arab nations will in effect be saying: Leave the necessary military crackdown against Hamas to someone else.
Who might that someone else be? Sooner or later, it will come back to Israel.
Jared Kushner has come up with the idea of dividing Gaza into the Israel zone (53% of the Gaza) and into the Palestinian zone. Two zones. This is a recipe for disaster.
• It will leave Hamas in place.
• It will guarantee violent repression of Gazans in Gaza.
• It will leave Israel open to even more worldwide condemnation as an “occupier.”
Israel wants to see Hamas disarmed and defeated, whether by itself or by others, and then exit from Gaza, save for a security ring around the area to prevent new arms smuggling into Gaza via tunnels or otherwise.
Just as the world has forgotten how Israel came to occupy parts of the West Bank — after Jordan attacked Israel in 1967 and lost — the world will soon enough forget how Israel came to occupy 53%Gaza, if it comes to that — not because Israel wanted to, but because the US, the EUand Arab nations happily criticized Israel for fighting to destroy Hamas while not undertaking the job themselves after they forced Israel to stop.
Israel needed to stop, to rest, to refocus. Israel needed to get its hostages back. It needed to heal from the untenable, Hamas-imposed dilemma of not letting Hamas live and thus endangering the hostages, or letting the hostages come home and letting Hamas live. The ceasefire is good for Israel.
But if Hamas keeps killing its own people and thereby rebuilds its own power, and if the nations of the world leave Hamas in power, sooner or later Israel will be back at war against Hamas.
President Trump wrote on Truth Social, “If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them.”
US CENTCOM Adm. Brad Cooper called on Hamas to “immediately suspend violence and shooting at innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza.”
Fine sentiments, Messrs. Trump and Cooper. Action speaks louder than words. And the only action taken against Hamas has been Israel’s, not yours.
Will Arab and other nations desire to pay to rebuild Gaza if Hamas remains in power in part of Gaza? No. But this won’t force Hamas out of Gaza. It will simply leave Gaza as it is, in a shambles, not rebuilt.
If, under Jared Kushner’s plan, Arab and other nations finance the rebuilding only of that part of Gaza not controlled by Hamas, will that force those Gazans under Hamas’ thumbto rise up against Hamas, out of jealousy? No. Because rising up as a gun is pointed at one’s head is unlikely.
Besides, if Gaza is divided in two, who is to stop Hamas from launching attacks beyond the territory in Gaza that it controls? The question is circular. No one will stop Hamas unless there are boots on the ground to do so militarily.
If and when there are, the vicious choices that Hamas thrust on Israel on Oct. 7 — roll over and be massacred, or take the fight to Hamas in the mosques, homes, hospitals, tunnels and community centers where Hamas fights from — might finally be understood by the genocide-accusing crowd.
Not to mention, the longer Hamas is allowed to keep power in part of Gaza, the more time it has not only to kill off its enemies but to buy off the Gazans under its control.
The Oct. 10 ceasefire is doomed to failure unless Hamas is not only denounced, but disarmed.
© IJN 2025
