A senior official on President Donald Trump’s Peace Council rejected reports that the administration has given up on dismantling Hamas and demilitarizing the Gaza Strip. In a conversation with Channel 14, the official said, “The claim that the administration has abandoned the goal of dismantling Hamas and demilitarizing Gaza is completely false. The Peace Council demands full demilitarization of the Strip. The president has been clear on this, and the UN Security Council has also established this. This was also made clear to Hamas in talks with them.”
1+The official added that from the administration’s perspective, there will be no change to the principle that Gaza’s reconstruction is contingent on its demilitarization. “There will be no reconstruction of the Strip without demilitarization. The idea is simply to do it more smartly: instead of going now for a large military operation, pull the Gazan population out of Hamas-controlled territory into IDF-controlled areas, through the establishment of temporary refugee camps made of light construction.”
Against this backdrop, Israel appears willing to forgo, for now, completing the goal of eliminating Hamas’s governing and military capabilities before the elections. The considerations include Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s desire to prioritize other fronts—primarily Iran and Hezbollah, where escalation could resume at any time—alongside significant American pressure to avoid a large-scale military operation in the Strip at this stage.
1+Still, voices in Israel are warning against the American plan to separate the population from Hamas. While it’s seen as a promising idea on paper, some voices—not from the political echelon—worry that thousands of Hamas operatives and tens of thousands of supporters will enter IDF-controlled areas along with the population, allowing the organization to expand its grip even in areas captured during the fighting.
According to the more severe assessments, such a scenario could allow Hamas to collect taxes even in the new areas, use the population for intelligence gathering on IDF forces, and even help smuggle weapons into the Strip—concerns that continue to fuel debate over the plan’s feasibility.