COLUMN: In Gaza, the promised disarmament is moving forward amid airstrikes

The Word That Should Put an End to It All

One Sunday after the announcement

The word “ceasefire” should be a refuge. In Gaza, it all too often remains a phrase riddled with strikes.

On August 2, Israeli attacks once again killed Palestinians. The death tolls vary depending on the time, location, and source: the Associated Press reported at least 17 deaths in strikes over the weekend, while Al Jazeera counted at least 19 for Sunday alone.

Among the dead identified by local hospitals were children. The Israeli military claimed to have targeted combatants. These two facts must be considered together, without one overshadowing the other: a claimed military target does not make a civilian death any less irreversible.

Peace Proclaimed, Fear Perpetuated

A few days earlier, Donald Trump had hailed an agreement to disarm Hamas as a breakthrough. The timing makes the contradiction untenable: a framework for peace is announced, yet the ground continues to yield funerals.

It is not established that every strike legally constitutes a formal breach of the agreement. What is established is that people are dying while the terms meant to prevent further deaths are being negotiated.

When peace fails to protect the coming night, it remains nothing more than a verb.

Disarmament isn’t a push of a button

A multi-step process

The plan does not call for a single dramatic gesture, but rather a sequence of steps: govern, secure, inventory, hand over, neutralize, withdraw, rebuild.

A copy of the agreement obtained and verified by the Associated Press stipulates that weapons belonging to the Hamas-controlled police force are to be transferred to the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza once it enters the enclave.

Heavy weapons must then be decommissioned and stored. Military production sites and tunnels must be dismantled following the deployment of international forces. The language is precise because the challenge is immense.

The first step has not been taken

The Palestinian technocratic committee has been formed, but its entry into Gaza remains conditional. Without its presence, the inventory process cannot begin. Without an international force, the handover of heavy weapons will not proceed as planned.

Disarmament is therefore contingent on institutions that have not yet fully established themselves on the ground. Demanding the final result before putting the initial mechanisms in place is like asking a door to open before its hinges have been installed.

The sequence matters, because a peace process turned on its head quickly becomes an ultimatum.

Withdrawal in Exchange for Weapons

Two Intertwined Promises

At the heart of the agreement is an exchange of vulnerabilities: Hamas relinquishes its military capabilities while Israel reduces its military presence.

According to the agreement described by the AP and by Palestinian sources cited in the regional press, the disarmament must proceed in tandem with a phased Israeli withdrawal. This parallelism is not merely symbolic. It is trust made visible.

Israel still controls more than 60% of the Gaza Strip, according to the AP. For Palestinians, disarmament without withdrawal could resemble a surrender under occupation. For Israel, withdrawal without disarmament could open the door to rearmament.

Security Held Hostage by the Sequence of Actions

Benjamin Netanyahu’s office conveyed “serious security concerns” to Washington. His spokesperson stated that Israel would not withdraw until Hamas had genuinely disarmed.

That is the crux of the matter: each side wants the other to take the first risk. Yet an agreement in which each party holds back its action until the other has fully carried out its part is not a working agreement. It is an armed stalemate.

In this market of mistrust, civilians pay in cash for what the powerful negotiate on credit.

The dead are not a mere footnote

Names Amid the Mechanism

A plan may have 20 points. A family struck by tragedy experiences only one: someone will not be coming home.

The AP identified Kamal Abu Muailiq, 68, and Huda Abu Muailiq, 59, among those killed. It also documented the deaths of the child Azzam Abu Al-Teif and his father, Abdullah.

Al Jazeera, citing medical sources, reported that Azzam was five years old and that his pregnant mother, Abeer Anan, had also been killed. These are not fabricated symbols meant to elicit emotion. These are identities reported by available sources.

Restraint as a Duty

We do not know what they said to one another. We do not know what they hoped for from the U.S. announcement. We do not know what they heard before the impact. To invent that silence would be a second act of violence.

We know only that people by name were killed just as an agreement—supposed to bring Gaza closer to an end to the conflict—had been presented. That is enough. The mere fact alone carries all the grief.

There is nothing to embellish in five years that have come to an end.

Israel has a real fear

The specter of October 7

Rejecting caricature requires acknowledging this: Israel’s fear of Hamas’s rearmament is rooted in a real historical wound.

On October 7, 2023, fighters led by Hamas killed approximately 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostage. This attack remains the foundation of Israeli security doctrine.

The prime minister’s spokesperson stated that Israeli intelligence indicated that Hamas was recruiting, rearming, and rebuilding its capabilities. This assertion comes from the Israeli government; the sources consulted do not allow for independent verification of its full scope.

Fear does not grant unlimited rights

Understanding this fear does not mean giving it a blank check. A security doctrine that maintains strikes without making withdrawal credible may ultimately fuel the very chaos it claims to prevent.

The moral and strategic challenge lies here: protecting Israelis without treating every Palestinian life as expendable collateral damage. True security is measured not only by the weapons taken from the enemy, but by the innocent lives we stop killing.

A legitimate fear ceases to be legitimate when it renders another people expendable.

Hamas also bears a debt

The Choice of Weapons

Hamas cannot demand the protection of civilians while keeping intact a military infrastructure embedded within their territory.

The U.S. plan requires the surrender of weapons and the destruction of the tunnel network. This is not a detail added merely to satisfy Israel. It is the stated condition for a Gaza-based order in which public decision-making would no longer be controlled by an armed organization.

Hamas has accepted the principle of a process, but the wording and timeline remain contentious. Officials have spoken of surrender, storage, or decommissioning, depending on the category of weapons. These nuances can become chasms when the time comes to act.

Sovereignty cannot be proclaimed at gunpoint

A technocratic administration cannot govern if a parallel force retains the practical right to decide on war. The transfer of police weapons to the national committee seeks precisely to place the use of force under civilian authority.

But Hamas’s responsibility never absolves Israel’s. These two responsibilities can coexist without canceling each other out. One concerns militarization and October 7. The other concerns the use of force and the protection of civilians.

The liberation of a people cannot depend forever on a weapon that that people does not control.

Governance Before Slogans

The committee that must take office

Phase two will not be decided in a conference room: it will succeed—or fail—based on an administration’s ability to function.

The White House presents the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza as the body tasked with restoring essential services, rebuilding civil institutions, and stabilizing daily life. Ali Sha’ath serves as its director.

This committee must also take possession of the weapons from the Hamas police and oversee the inventory. It thus becomes at once the embryo of a government, a service provider, and a key link in the disarmament process. The task is daunting.

Authority Without Territory

Ahram Online reported that the committee was operating from Egypt, unable to enter the enclave due to Israeli objections. As long as this situation persists, the plan calls on an absent institution to carry out a transition that must take place on the ground.

Governance is not a diplomatic family portrait. It involves water, electricity, permits, salaries, schools, complaints, and the police. Without these functions, the vacuum is not neutral: armed groups, survival networks, and fear fill it.

You cannot demilitarize a territory by leaving it stateless.

Aid as a Sign of Good Faith

A ceasefire is also something you can eat

For a displaced and impoverished population, the credibility of an agreement begins with trucks rolling in and services being restored.

United Nations humanitarian reports describe immense needs despite the truce. Hundreds of thousands of people still live in makeshift shelters or destroyed neighborhoods. Institutional peace remains abstract when daily life remains unlivable.

The plan links Phase Two to reconstruction and the restoration of services. This connection makes sense: a population cannot be asked to support a new order if that order does nothing to address hunger, healthcare, or shelter.

Reconstruction cannot wait for perfection

Israel argues that security guarantees must precede major concessions. However, withholding aid or reconstruction until total disarmament occurs turns civilians into human guarantees in a negotiation over which they have no control.

Aid must not reward Hamas. It must prevent Palestinians from being punished for Hamas’s actions. This distinction is simple to state but difficult to implement; yet it remains the most basic test of the plan’s integrity.

A bag of flour is not a military concession.

The Missing International Force

Monitoring Without Occupying

The plan relies on an international stabilization force that is even easier to announce than to deploy in a fractured territory.

This force must oversee the decommissioning of weapons, support a new Palestinian police force, and provide external verification. Without it, Israel does not trust Hamas, Hamas does not trust Israel, and the civilian committee lacks protection.

The mandate will be decisive. Who can inspect? Who can seize? Who protects the committee? Who responds to a violation? Press releases promise a presence; peace requires rules of engagement, a chain of command, and states willing to assume the risk.

The world loves structures without soldiers

The mediators—the United States, Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey—can facilitate. They do not replace operational capability. The gap between a diplomatic framework and a credible force is often the very place where agreements fall apart.

This force must not become an indefinite international occupation. It must create the space for a civilian Palestinian authority to emerge, and then step aside. The duration, Palestinian control, and accountability must be clear.

A peacekeeping force without a clear mission becomes just another uniform amid the confusion.

Washington Must Choose Between Promises and Guarantees

The President’s Influence

Donald Trump deserves credit for forcing a stalled issue to move forward; he must now bear the cost of his own announcement.

His 20-point plan set a direction: technocratic governance, demilitarization, gradual withdrawal, an international force, and reconstruction. The White House has also established a Peace Council tasked with oversight and resource mobilization.

This is a genuine ambition. But a presidential ambition protects no one if Washington allows each party to subsequently redefine the order of obligations to its own advantage. American influence is measured by what it achieves after the applause dies down.

Pressure must be symmetrical in its implementation

The United States must demand observable steps toward disarmament from Hamas. It must also demand observable steps toward withdrawal from Israel, access for the civilian administration, and a reduction in operations that kill non-combatants.

This is not equating October 7 with the war that followed. It is recognizing that an agreement collapses when its guarantor imposes deadlines and consequences only on the weaker side.

The mediator is not the one who speaks to both sides, but the one who ensures both obligations are upheld.

Elections Behind the Front Lines

Netanyahu’s Timeline

As the October Israeli elections approach, any territorial concession also becomes a domestic political risk for Benjamin Netanyahu.

The AP highlights the pressure exerted by his far-right allies, who want to keep the pressure on Hamas and maintain a military presence in Gaza. His opponents, meanwhile, accuse him of failing to prevent the October 7 attack.

This dual constraint pushes him toward visible firmness. Withdrawing could be portrayed as weakness; continuing the strikes could be framed as vigilance. Gaza’s civilians thus find themselves living under an electoral timeline in which they have no say.

Domestic politics is never just domestic

A democratic government has the right to defend its people and be accountable to its voters. It does not have the moral right to use foreign lives as currency for its political survival.

The same principle applies to Hamas, whose military decisions are not based on any recent, free mandate from the people of Gaza. On both sides, political structures lay claim to the people while making them bear the risk.

In Gaza, strategies get a vote; the dead, never.

The Trap of Verification

Who will declare that a weapon has been neutralized?

Disarmament will fail if every rifle becomes a debate and every tunnel an accusation that cannot be resolved.

The agreement distinguishes between police weapons, heavy weapons, production sites, and tunnels. Therefore, a registry, inspections, storage facilities, and destruction procedures accepted by the parties are needed.

Israel wants confiscated weapons to be destroyed, according to a person familiar with the matter cited by the AP. The reported plan also mentions their storage and deactivation. These terms must be harmonized before any ambiguity becomes a military pretext.

Trust Through Action

Credible verification does not depend on statements from Hamas or on Israeli intelligence that cannot be shared. It requires an international authority capable of observing, publishing, and correcting.

It must also monitor Israeli withdrawals and ceasefire violations. Verifying only Palestinian weapons, without verifying Israeli strikes and positions, would turn a peace mechanism into a unilateral instrument of surrender.

What is verified on only one side always ends up being rejected by the other.

Rebuilding Without Building a Cage

The Territory After the War

Reconstruction does not mean putting walls back up under a permanent regime of permits, surveillance, and fear.

The U.S. plan speaks of economic development and the restoration of services. The scale of the destruction demands a long-term vision: housing, water systems, hospitals, schools, roads, and institutions must all move forward together.

But money will not repair a political order without a future. If Gaza is rebuilt while remaining isolated, fragmented, and without credible self-determination, the new facades will merely mask the old impasse.

Security Requires a Future

Israel will not achieve lasting security by perpetually administering the ruins of a neighbor. The Palestinians will not gain their freedom by allowing an armed faction to indefinitely dictate the pace of their catastrophe.

Phase two must therefore be about more than just a construction project. It must pave the way for a responsible Palestinian Authority, tied to a political solution. Without this vision, reconstruction risks becoming a costly interlude between two wars.

You cannot rebuild peace by merely rebuilding what the next war might destroy.

The Central Contradiction

Waiting for Everything Before Beginning

Israel wants disarmament before withdrawal; the plan calls for disarmament alongside withdrawal. Between these two positions, lives hang in the balance.

The Israeli government fears that a withdrawal would allow Hamas to retake the territory and rebuild its infrastructure. The Palestinians fear that surrendering weapons without a withdrawal would consolidate military domination without any concessions in return.

The two fears do not share the same history or the same material power. Yet they produce the same practical impasse: neither side wants to be the first to become vulnerable.

Breaking the Impossible Simultaneity

The solution is not to choose blind trust. It is to break down the obligations into small, time-bound, and verifiable steps: the committee’s entry, the first withdrawal, the transfer of a category of weapons, humanitarian access, inspection, and another withdrawal.

Each step must trigger the next. Each violation must elicit a predetermined response. Diplomacy then becomes less poetic, but more humane, because it reduces the time during which civilians remain at the mercy of leaders’ goodwill.

Peace does not require a leap of faith; it requires a sturdy staircase.

What the Sources Aren’t Saying Yet

Changing figures

The death toll for August 2 varies, and honesty demands that we acknowledge this variation rather than choosing the most convenient number.

Local hospitals, Palestinian health authorities, Civil Defense, and the media compiled the death tolls at different times. The Israeli military stated that it was targeting militants, though available sources do not independently verify the status of each person killed.

It would be wrong to turn an estimate into a definitive verdict. It would be just as wrong to use uncertainty over a few cases to obscure the confirmed deaths and identified children.

An Agreement Yet to Be Fully Tested

We do not yet know whether Hamas will actually hand over its heavy weapons, whether Israel will agree to stage-by-stage withdrawals, or whether the international force will be deployed with a viable mandate.

Nor do we know whether the observed strikes will be considered formal violations of the ceasefire by the relevant mechanism. This lack of knowledge does not preclude judgment; it simply sets limits on it.

Naming what is missing does not diminish anger; it prevents it from becoming a lie.

The Only Test That Matters

Fewer weapons, fewer graves

A good agreement is not measured by the beauty of its structure, but by the number of families it saves from losing a loved one.

The disarmament of Hamas is necessary for credible civilian governance. Israeli withdrawal is necessary for a peace that does not resemble a reorganized occupation. Aid and reconstruction are necessary for life to begin anew before despair takes hold.

None of these truths should be used to push the others aside. They form a single moral contract. Removing one element destabilizes the rest.

The Next Morning

Washington, Israel, Hamas, the mediators, and future Palestinian leaders can still make this Phase Two something other than yet another empty promise. They will have to accept that one party’s security can no longer be built on the absolute insecurity of the other.

August 2 will then remain a warning, not a blueprint for what comes next. Names have already been added to an all-too-long list while peace sought its order of execution.

The question is no longer whether the plan is smart. The question is who, tomorrow, will still be alive because it has finally begun.

A ceasefire begins when the firing stops.

Signed, Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist’s Transparency Box

Editorial Position

I am not a journalist, but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analyzing the geopolitical, economic, and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work consists of dissecting political strategies, understanding global economic trends, contextualizing the decisions of international actors, and offering analytical perspectives on the transformations that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim to possess the dispassionate objectivity of traditional journalism, which is limited to factual reporting. I strive for analytical clarity, rigorous interpretation, and a deep understanding of the complex issues that affect us all. My role is to make sense of the facts, situate them within their historical and strategic context, and offer a critical analysis of events.

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This text respects the fundamental distinction between verified facts and interpretive analysis. The methodological rule is consistent: factual information is published only if it is supported by a verifiable source, and the sources actually used in this article are listed under “Sources,” never here.

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When an article cites statistical, economic, or geopolitical data, it comes from data-producing institutions (intergovernmental organizations, central banks, national statistical institutes), and the specific institution is listed under “Sources.”

Nature of the Analysis

The analyses, interpretations, and perspectives presented in the analytical sections of this article constitute a critical and contextual synthesis based on available information, observed trends, and expert commentary cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, contextualize them within the framework of contemporary geopolitical and economic dynamics, and give them coherent meaning within the broader narrative of the transformations shaping our era. These analyses reflect expertise developed through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs as of its publication date, not a prediction: subsequent developments may alter these perspectives. No updates are promised in advance; when an article is corrected or supplemented, the change is dated within the text.

COLUMN: In Gaza, the promised disarmament is moving forward amid airstrikes