Hamas refuses peace deal: will not disarm in Gaza

On Sunday in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a 15-point Gaza roadmap backed by President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace. He informed his cabinet that Israeli forces will not withdraw until Hamas is “genuinely disarmed.”

“It needs to be genuine disarmament, not fictitious disarmament,” Netanyahu said, resisting a plan that would tie phased IDF withdrawal to incremental steps toward Hamas demilitarization. 

The decision met with swift criticism from Western media and certain intermediaries linked to the Trump administration. These voices have presented Israel’s insistence on disarmament as the chief barrier to a Gaza ceasefire. Israeli officials reply that the disagreement concerns sequence alone. Withdraw first, they caution, and Hamas retains its arsenal undiminished.

Palestinian polling lends weight to that caution. A PCPSR survey conducted between 22 and 25 October 2025 found that 53 percent of Palestinians believe Hamas was right to launch the 7 October attack. Fully 86 percent deny that Hamas committed atrocities against Israeli civilians, and nearly 70 percent oppose the disarming of Hamas even if it would end the war for good. 

Among Gazans themselves, 55 percent reject disarmament, 68 percent refuse an Arab security force to supervise demilitarization, and two-thirds reject a demilitarized Palestinian state even if it terminated the “occupation.”

Israel has set two conditions for ending the war and withdrawing: the return of every hostage and the verified disarmament of Hamas. The reasoning, as Israeli officials explain it, is elementary. One cannot disarm an organization whose own population declines to surrender its weapons. If Israel leaves before those weapons are eliminated, Hamas emerges from the conflict with its army intact, free to rearm, regroup, and attempt another 7 October. 

Hamas has deliberately embedded its military infrastructure within civilian sites, among them mosques, schools, and hospitals, its command centre operating beneath Gaza’s largest hospital. Disarmament without IDF enforcement simply means those weapons remain concealed.

The next generation of terrorists

In a hypothetical presidential contest, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal would defeat PA President Abbas by 63 percent to 27 percent. In legislative polling, Hamas leads Fatah by 44 percent to 30 percent. The notion that Hamas fails to reflect Palestinian political will is contradicted by the preferences Palestinians themselves express.

The prospect of external rearming only sharpens the urgency of sequence. In August 2026, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian publicly reaffirmed Tehran’s determination to keep Hamas armed, telling the group’s new political leader, “We are with you, and we support you in every action you take.” 

Israel has privately informed the Trump administration that there is “no alternative” to the IDF for enforcing disarmament. Israeli Ambassador Yechiel Leiter has confirmed that there can be no peace in Gaza unless Hamas returns all hostages and disarms.

“The population of the Gaza Strip is supportive of Hamas. They embrace that genocidal ideology,” Pesach Wolicki of Eyes on Israel observed in October 2025.

The genuine obstacle is not Israel’s refusal to append a signature to a document. It is that nearly 70 percent of Palestinians reject the disarmament required for any withdrawal to prove durable, while Iran undertakes to keep Hamas armed and no international force possesses a credible plan to compel compliance. 

Under such conditions, withdrawal before disarmament is not a ceasefire. It is a countdown to the next round.

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Trump's Iran deal 'largely negotiated' while GOP hawks start losing their minds

As Washington celebrated the latest draft of a Middle East peace deal, sources confirmed Thursday that President Donald Trump had nearly completed negotiations between the United States, Iran, Israel, several Gulf states, and apparently every other person on Earth except the people who would eventually have to follow the agreement.

Trump announced on Truth Social that an agreement with Iran had been “largely negotiated,” prompting immediate concern among foreign policy experts, Senate hawks, and several thousand Washington think tank employees whose job descriptions depend on perpetual regional instability.

“I am in the Oval Office at the White House where we just had a very good call,” Trump wrote, explaining that leaders across the Middle East had discussed “all things related to a Memorandum of Understanding pertaining to PEACE,” a phrase reportedly causing three defense contractors to faint simultaneously.

The president added, “An Agreement has been largely negotiated, subject to finalization between the United States of America, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the various other Countries, as listed.”

Sources confirmed that nobody was entirely sure what “the various other Countries, as listed” meant, but negotiators nodded enthusiastically anyway.

The proposed agreement would reportedly reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil shipping route that Iran has largely disrupted throughout the conflict. Analysts estimate this could allow millions of barrels of oil to move freely again, while depriving cable news panels of at least six months of apocalyptic predictions.

Meanwhile, Israeli officials reportedly gathered for emergency meetings after learning that Trump had once again attempted to solve a decades-old geopolitical crisis by making phone calls and declaring victory before dessert.

Still, President Trump insisted everything was proceeding smoothly, and let's face it, most of the time he's correct.

“Separately, I had a call with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, of Israel, which, likewise, went very well,” he wrote. “Final aspects and details of the Deal are currently being discussed, and will be announced shortly. In addition to many other elements of the Agreement, the Strait of Hormuz will be opened.”

According to White House insiders, Trump spent several minutes reminding attendees that he literally wrote The Art of the Deal, while Middle Eastern diplomats quietly wondered whether that qualified as binding international law.

Not everyone was celebrating.

Republican senators immediately emerged from their underground network of strategic briefing rooms to warn that peace itself could pose a grave threat to regional stability.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina expressed alarm that any arrangement allowing Iran’s government to continue existing might create a “nightmare for Israel.”

“If a deal is struck to end the Iranian conflict because it is believed that the Strait of Hormuz cannot be protected from Iranian terrorism and Iran still possesses the capability to destroy major Gulf oil infrastructure, then Iran will be perceived as being a dominate [sic] force requiring a diplomatic solution,” Graham posted on X.

The war hawk added, “This combination of Iran being perceived as having the ability to terrorize the Strait in perpetuity and the ability [to] inflict massive damage to Gulf oil infrastructure is a major shift of the balance of power in the region and over time will be a nightmare for Israel.”

Experts translated Graham’s statement as: “Have we considered bombing something first and negotiating later?”

Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi was equally skeptical.

“The rumored 60-day ceasefire, with the belief that Iran will ever engage in good faith, would be a disaster. Everything accomplished by Operation Epic Fury would be for naught!” he posted.

Pentagon officials reportedly spent the afternoon explaining to Americans that “Operation Epic Fury” was, in fact, the actual name of a military campaign and not a rejected Xbox game title.

At press time, Washington hawks were warning that a negotiated settlement could dangerously undermine decades of bipartisan consensus that every Middle Eastern conflict is exactly three airstrikes away from permanent peace.

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