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WHY ISRAEL’S DEMAND FOR HAMAS TO DISARM IS A RED HERRING  
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Muhammad Shehada
May 13, 2025
+972 Magazine
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_ Every blocked aid convoy, every broken truce, and every rejected
peace offer underscores Israel’s true objective: erasing
Palestinians from Gaza - part of a deliberate campaign of ethnic
cleansing. _

Members of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas and
mourners attend the funeral of Al-Qassam fighters who were killed
during the war between Israel and Hamas in the Al-Shati camp, in Gaza
City, February 28, 2025., Photo: Khalil Kahlout/Flash90 // +972
Magazine

 

In mid-April, Egypt delivered Israel’s latest proposal
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Hamas: a temporary, 45-day truce in exchange for the release of 12
Israeli captives and 16 bodies. This time, however, Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu added a condition that prompted Hamas to
immediately reject the offer — a demand for the group’s complete
disarmament, without any commitment to ending the war, withdrawing
Israeli forces from Gaza, or halting the ethnic cleansing.

The truth is, Israel’s insistence on Hamas’ disarmament is a red
herring designed to sabotage any meaningful progress in the ceasefire
talks and allow the genocide to continue. This was made abundantly
clear when Israel’s government adopted plans
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conquer and permanently occupy all of Gaza, squeeze the population
into concentration camps
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the border with Egypt and force as many as possible to leave, and
maintain that apparatus even after all Israeli captives are released.

Demanding disarmament is a similar sleight of hand to the one that
allowed Netanyahu to derail ceasefire negotiations last year by
falsely claiming that invading Rafah was crucial to the process of
dismantling Hamas’ smuggling tunnels along the Egyptian border.
After 12 months of systematically leveling the southern city, Israeli
forces failed to uncover a single operational tunnel. Yet as
Israel’s own former defense minister recently revealed
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that didn’t stop the government from fabricating a tunnel discovery
specifically to sabotage ceasefire efforts.

For Israel, Hamas’ disarmament is merely the pretext; The real goal,
as Netanyahu himself admitted recently
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render Gaza uninhabitable, ungovernable, and ultimately unpopulated.
Every negotiation Israel sabotages, every ceasefire it undermines, and
every humanitarian convoy it blocks are part of a deliberate campaign
of ethnic cleansing. Netanyahu’s strategy is not peace through
security, but conquest through suffering: to grind Gaza down until its
people either flee, starve, or disappear beneath the rubble. This is
not a war on Hamas, it is a war on the very existence of Palestinians
in Gaza.

An ‘existential threat’ to Israel

After a year and a half of Israeli bombardment and blockade, Hamas has
virtually no offensive weaponry left. While the group launched about
5,000 rockets at Israel during its October 7 attack, it is now only
capable of firing once or twice a week. 

But even these sporadic launches — improvised projectiles without
warheads that have not killed a single Israeli since Israel shattered
the ceasefire
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March — have triggered intense domestic backlash
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Hamas. Israel seizes on them as justification for collective
punishment, issuing mass expulsion orders and carrying out
indiscriminate bombings across the enclave. Netanyahu himself boasted
at the UN last October that Hamas had lost over 90% of its rocket
stockpile.

The chances of Hamas launching another October 7-style attack in the
foreseeable future are conclusively zero
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agree that what allowed for the assault to succeed was Israel
getting caught completely off guard
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element of surprise is long gone, along with the chances of Israel
repeating the same tactical and intelligence failures that allowed it
to be attacked in such a way in the first place.

 
Palestinians take control of an Israeli tank after breaching the Gaza
fence from Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, October 7, 2023.
 (Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90  //  +972 Magazine)
According to officials involved in the negotiations, Hamas leaders in
Gaza themselves say they would not fire a single bullet at Israel at
least for the next 10-20 years, as long as Israel allows the
reconstruction of Gaza to proceed and lifts the siege. The January
ceasefire clearly demonstrated this: despite Israel violating the
truce nearly 1,000 times
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killing over 150 Gazans, and blocking aid, Hamas did not fire a single
bullet at Israeli troops or deliberately launch a single rocket at
Israel.

But while Hamas no longer maintains the capacity or will to directly
threaten Israel itself, it can sustain a long-term insurgency inside
Gaza against occupying Israeli forces, fueled by Israel’s continued
genocide and blockade. According to Israeli and U.S. intelligence
officials, Hamas has managed to recruit
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least as many fighters as it lost
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Israeli attacks since the start of the war.

Both Israel and Hamas share an interest in exaggerating Hamas’
remaining capabilities. Israel wants to portray Hamas as an
“existential threat” to justify its continued onslaught on Gaza,
while Hamas wants to present an image of victory in hope of
strengthening its position in the ceasefire negotiations, particularly
with regard to the withdrawal of Israeli troops. By projecting
strength after 18 months of war, Hamas aims to prove to Israelis the
futility of their country’s genocidal violence, both in crushing the
group itself and Palestinian resistance in general.

THE DISARMAMENT TRAP

Right now, about 10,000 tons of unexploded Israeli bombs lie scattered
across Gaza, material Hamas recycles into rockets, mortars, and IEDs.

Israel has been preventing UN missions
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other international organizations from doing any demining work in
Gaza. A senior European Union official told me that Israel only allows
UN missions to mark unexploded ordinances with spray paint, leaving
them at risk of falling into the hands of Hamas or killing or injuring
civilians. Israel has also killed dozens of Gaza’s police
engineering division tasked with demining and defusing unexploded
ordnance.

 
Palestinian children stand near an unexploded munition in a displaced
persons camp in Gaza City, April 19, 2025.  (Photo: Yousef
Zaanoun/Activestills  //  +972 Magazine)
The Egyptian Plan for Gaza’s recovery and reconstruction explicitly
lays out a plan for the removal and disposal of unexploded ordnance in
Gaza within six months. It also proposes ending Hamas’ rule in Gaza
where a technocratic administrative committee would take over for a
transitional period with a police force that is trained by Egypt and
Jordan. Hamas, Fatah, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Arab
League all endorsed this plan. Israel, however, immediately rejected
it.

Hamas reportedly offered Trump’s hostage negotiator, Adam Boehler, a
commitment whereby it would not produce any new weapons or dig any new
tunnels in return for a long-term truce with Israel. Some Hamas
officials have even indicated
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to “have all of the group’s weapons placed in a guarded
warehouse”. 

These offers — effectively amounting to a commitment by Hamas to
disarm while saving face — would be a win-win. And yet, Israel again
rejected them as “non-starter.” In fact, Netanyahu’s
government leaked
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secret channel between Washington and Hamas to sabotage Boehler’s
efforts, before doing everything in its power to remove him from his
role altogether.

Over 70 days later, the U.S.-Hamas channel was resumed and the group
announced the unconditional release
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U.S.-Israeli soldier Edan Alexander as a gesture of good faith toward
Trump ahead of his Middle East visit. It was a smart, if belated, move
— one that could have been made in early March, when Boehler first
engaged with Hamas. The group tried to extract concessions in exchange
for Alexander’s release, and by the time they circled back,
Netanyahu had already derailed the talks.

 
Israelis watch the release of American-Israeli hostage Edan
Alexander, in Tel Aviv, May 12, 2025.  (Photo: Chaim Goldberg/Flash90
 //  +972 Magazine)
Now, with no deal in hand, Hamas hopes the gesture will expose
Netanyahu’s intransigence — both to the White House and the
Israeli public — and increase pressure to revive ceasefire
negotiations, possibly around the Witkoff proposal. But the move could
also backfire: Netanyahu is already spinning it as a result of
“military pressure,” using it to justify continuing the war
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As Trump begins his meetings with regional leaders, the question
remains whether this symbolic release opens a diplomatic door — or
merely becomes more fodder for a prolonged conflict.

Had Israel allowed Boehler’s meetings to continue, we would have
probably gotten a more comprehensive deal out of Alexander’s release
that would have included a long term truce with Hamas providing
numerous security guarantees that would in practice amount to
disarmament.

Why, then, does Netanyahu insist on disarming Hamas at every
opportunity, while simultaneously sabotaging any real discussion on
disarmament? Simple, it’s another one of his maneuvers — demanding
concessions he knows Palestinians can’t and won’t accept, in order
to blow up discussions he does not want to hold.

WHY DOESN’T HAMAS JUST DISARM?

Netanyahu’s insistence on Hamas unilaterally disarming is a red line
for a number of reasons. First, Israel is giving Hamas no incentive
to disarm. Netanyahu made clear
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even if the group surrenders, exiles its leaders, and returns all
hostages, Israel would still occupy and depopulate Gaza. Israel’s
defense minister reiterated this position
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mid-April when he said the Israeli army will continue to occupy major
chunks of Gaza “in any arrangement — temporary or permanent,”
through the creation of so-called “buffer zones,” similar to those
Israel previously established in Lebanon and Syria.

That’s why when people ask
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Hamas doesn’t surrender like Japan or Germany in 1945, they are
missing the point. Aside from Germany and Japan being occupying
aggressors, while Palestinians are occupied people resisting
domination, neither of those countries faced the threat of settler
colonialism or full depopulation as Gaza does today. Moreover, after
surrendering, both of these nations received tens of billions of
dollars in aid for reconstruction from the very country they
surrendered to, while Israel refuses to invest a single penny in
Gaza’s recovery and actively blocks Palestinians from rebuilding on
their own.

 
Palestinians shop for food at the market during the holy fasting
month of Ramadan in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, March 6, 2025.
 (Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90  //  +972 Magazine)
Second, Palestinians have learned through traumatic experience that
disarmament, rather than facilitating peace, has only made it easier
for Israel to kill, kidnap, and maim them. Soon after the PLO
surrendered its weapons in 1982 and left Lebanon, Israel and its South
Lebanon Army proxy massacred over 3,500 Palestinian refugees in Sabra
and Shatila
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The atrocity was so shocking that 400,000 Israelis took to the street
in protest, ultimately forcing Defense Minister Ariel Sharon to
resign. Today, Israel faces virtually no domestic backlash for its
actions in Gaza or the West Bank, no matter how extreme.

Given this history, demands for Gaza to relinquish its few remaining,
largely rudimentary weapons evoke existential fears. Many Palestinians
worry that Gaza would become a darker mirror of the West Bank,
where settlers and soldiers
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loot, murder, torture, kidnap and sexually assault
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full impunity.

Third, even if Hamas agreed to disarm, it is unclear who would enforce
the process. Many of its members would likely reject the authority of
the political leadership in Doha, denounce them as traitors, and
refuse to disarm while Israeli forces remain present. This scenario
resembles the experience in Colombia in 2016, where FARC leaders
agreed to disarm but lacked the ability to enforce compliance, leading
many fighters to join criminal gangs or other militant groups.

Fourth, according to multiple sources familiar with the negotiations,
Netanyahu isn’t merely demanding Hamas’ disarmament — he is
insisting on a humiliating surrender, including staged spectacles of
Hamas leaders publicly handing over their weapons before being exiled
from Gaza. However, Hamas’ current role as the dominant resistance
force in Gaza allows it to enforce ceasefires and restrain more
radical factions such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Mujahideen
Brigades. Its complete removal could create a power vacuum, enabling
these groups to carry out unpredictable attacks against Israel —
potentially escalating violence rather than ending it.

Compare this to the Palestinian Authority’s recent campaign in Jenin
against local armed groups that further depleted its dwindling
legitimacy. Today, most Palestinians see the PA security forces as
little more than collaborators and subcontractors of Israel’s
occupation, especially given that decades of security coordination
have yielded no tangible benefits to the public, nor any progress
towards statehood, no matter what the PA does to prove to Israel that
it’s a worthy partner.

Hamas’ stated position that it will disarm and fully dismantle its
military wing once Israel ends its occupation of Palestinian
territories it occupied in 1967 has been recently reiterated by the
group’s current leader, Khalil al-Hayyia. But crucially, disarmament
must be the outcome of a peace agreement, not its prerequisite. The
Northern Ireland case offers a clear precedent: the IRA’s
disarmament unfolded gradually over seven years following the 1998
Good Friday Agreement, not before it.

At a time when Gaza teeters on the edge of societal collapse, a
“de-Baathification”-style purge of Hamas risks plunging the
territory into deeper chaos and internal strife. As long as Israel’s
occupation persists, even if Hamas disappears, someone else will pick
up the gun.

_[MUHAMMAD SHEHADA is a Gazan writer and political analyst, a visiting
fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.]_

_OUR TEAM HAS BEEN DEVASTATED BY THE HORRIFIC EVENTS OF THIS LATEST
WAR. THE WORLD IS REELING FROM ISRAEL’S UNPRECEDENTED ONSLAUGHT ON
GAZA, INFLICTING MASS DEVASTATION AND DEATH UPON BESIEGED
PALESTINIANS, AS WELL AS THE ATROCIOUS ATTACK AND KIDNAPPINGS BY HAMAS
IN ISRAEL ON OCTOBER 7. OUR HEARTS ARE WITH ALL THE PEOPLE AND
COMMUNITIES FACING THIS VIOLENCE. _

_We are in an extraordinarily dangerous era in Israel-Palestine. The
bloodshed has reached extreme levels of brutality and threatens to
engulf the entire region. Emboldened settlers in the West Bank, backed
by the army, are seizing the opportunity to intensify their attacks on
Palestinians. The most far-right government in Israel’s history is
ramping up its policing of dissent, using the cover of war to silence
Palestinian citizens and left-wing Jews who object to its policies._

_This escalation has a very clear context, one that +972 has spent the
past 14 years covering: Israeli society’s growing racism and
militarism, entrenched occupation and apartheid, and a normalized
siege on Gaza._

_We are well positioned to cover this perilous moment – but we need
your help to do it. This terrible period will challenge the humanity
of all of those working for a better future in this land. Palestinians
and Israelis are already organizing and strategizing to put up the
fight of their lives._

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