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** A Dangerous Deal: Trump's Board of Peace and Hamas ([link removed])
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by Khaled Abu Toameh • August 4, 2026 at 5:00 am
* The original goal of Trump's peace plan was not to relocate Hamas's arsenal. It was to eliminate it permanently.
* Weapons stored in warehouses remain weapons that function. Explosives stored today can be easily recovered tomorrow. Rocket factories that are preserved can resume production. Tunnels that are mapped rather than destroyed can be used again.
* The issue has never been where Hamas keeps its weapons. The issue has always been Hamas having access them.
* Transferring weapons from one Palestinian group to another is not demilitarization.
* Even more disturbing is the new deal's assertion that "no weapons shall be transferred or handed to Israel or non-Palestinian parties."
* Equally disturbing is the new roadmap's conditioning of disarmament on an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip....
* Why should a terrorist organization that carried out the October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel be allowed to dictate the conditions of its own disarmament? No country fighting ISIS or al-Qaeda would first withdraw its forces and only then hope terrorists voluntarily surrender their weapons. Hamas should not be negotiating the terms of its defeat. It should be compelled to unconditionally surrender and disarm.
* This is the same Ghazi Hamad [senior Hamas official] who publicly vowed that Hamas would repeat the October 7 massacre time and again until Israel is eliminated: "The Al-Aqsa Flood [the name Hamas uses to describe the October 7 massacre] is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth, because we have the determination, the resolve, and the capabilities to fight."
* Anyone who thinks that the newly established NCAG will somehow confront Hamas and impose its authority over the terrorist organization is living under an illusion.
* The far more likely scenario is that Hamas will continue to call the shots from behind the scenes while allowing another Palestinian body to assume responsibility for governance, civil service salaries, reconstruction, and collecting international aid.
* This would essentially replicate the Hezbollah model in Lebanon, where a heavily-armed Iran-backed terrorist militia coexists with a formal government while retaining independent military power and ultimate political influence.
* Within hours of the announcement of the roadmap, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps dismissed the plan outright, declaring... that "the resistance" (Hamas) would remain steadfast until what it called the "final victory" over Israel.
* Iran understands Hamas better than anyone else because it has financed, armed and trained the terrorist organization for decades. If the Iranian regime is openly rejecting the prospect of Hamas's disarmament, why should anyone else believe that Hamas intends to honor the agreement?

The original goal of Trump's peace plan was not to relocate Hamas's arsenal. It was to eliminate it permanently.
Weapons stored in warehouses remain weapons that function. Explosives stored today can be easily recovered tomorrow. Rocket factories that are preserved can resume production. Tunnels that are mapped rather than destroyed can be used again. Pictured: Hamas terrorists in Gaza City on January 25, 2025. (Photo by Abood Abusalama/Middle East Images via AFP)

For nearly a year, the international community insisted that there could be no future for the Gaza Strip unless Hamas was stripped of every weapon, every tunnel, every missile factory, and every military capability.

US President Donald J. Trump's September 2025 peace plan was explicit: Gaza would be demilitarized, terrorist infrastructure destroyed, and weapons rendered permanently unusable.

Article 13 of Trump's 20-point plan states:

"All military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt. There will be a process of demilitarization of Gaza under the supervision of independent monitors, which will include placing weapons permanently beyond use through an agreed process of decommissioning, and supported by an internationally funded buy back and reintegration program all verified by the independent monitors."

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