In a speech given Feb. 8 at the Al Jazeera forum in Doha, senior Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal rejected calls for the Palestinian movement to surrender its arms. As U.S. President Donald Trump’s newly-formed Board of Peace seeks to bring an end to the war in Gaza, its plan includes a number of conditions which Hamas has previously rejected, among them disarmament. 

“As long as there is occupation, there is resistance. Resistance is a right of peoples under occupation…something nations take pride in,” Meshaal stated. “In the context that our people are still under occupation, talking about disarmament is an attempt to make our people an easy victim to be eliminated and easily exterminated by Israel.” 

To Meshaal’s credit, Israel’s actions over the course of the war in Gaza (and the decades of conflict overall) have not done much to inspire Palestinian trust. A U.S.-mediated “ceasefire” went into effect in October of last year. Since then, Israel has violated the ceasefire at least 1,620 times, and it has done so on 107 of the 125 days that the ceasefire has been in place. Since October, Israel has killed nearly 600 Palestinians and injured 1500 others – an average of 4.5 deaths per day on top of the 70,000 already dead. If Israel continues to break the ceasefire near-daily, what reason does Hamas have to disarm? 

The proposed ceasefire is part of the first phase of a 20-point peace plan agreed to by Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last fall. Also included in the first phase of the plan was the release of all hostages by Israel and Hamas, which was completed by both sides eventually after missing deadlines, and the flow of more humanitarian aid into Gaza. 

But although humanitarian access has increased, the level of aid entering Gaza remains much lower than needed. Israel has been very strict about which organizations they allow to deliver aid – there are currently 37 organizations facing a ban at the end of this month for not complying with Israel’s registration restrictions. While Israel arbitrarily decides which aid enters Gaza, Palestinians are continuing to suffer. According to Ted Chaiban, a senior UNICEF official, “Despite the progress with food security, 100,000 children remain acutely malnourished and require long term care. 1.3 million people, many of them children, are in urgent need of proper shelter.” Unfortunately, Palestinians are forced to rely on aid for food, as Israel has destroyed 90% of the agricultural land in Gaza through its scorched-earth campaign. Even in a best-case scenario, self-sufficiency for Palestinians appears to be years down the line.

Despite the debatable success of the first phase of the Gaza peace plan, the U.S. announced in January that it was entering the second phase. According to U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, this phase is about “moving from ceasefire to demilitarization, technocratic governance, and reconstruction.” A temporary, transitional government would be under the oversight of the Board of Peace –  but Trump’s plan is unclear on what long-term leadership would look like, and it does not mention the concrete establishment of a Palestinian state. 

The official name for the technocratic committee is the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), and the body is made up of fifteen Palestinians. It is labeled as nonpartisan, but each member of the committee was vetted by Israel, and Palestinians remain skeptical about the level of the NCAG’s autonomy. How well can the NCAG protect the best interests of Palestinians when it operates under the control of the Board of Peace, which features several pro-Israel members? 

The plan for demilitarization centers around the disarmament of Hamas. Hamas had previously reaffirmed a “commitment to all the terms of the agreement,” but it also repeatedly resisted efforts to disarm. Meshaal’s recent statements make it clear that disarmament is a dealbreaker for Hamas, yet Netanyahu has also said that Israel would not allow the reconstruction of Gaza until disarmament takes place. It is unclear what the next steps are for the Board of Peace. 

In the past half-century, there have been multiple successful disarmaments globally. But analyzing these disarmaments, it becomes clear that peace processes succeed only once violence is deemed irrational or unnecessary. Looking at two specific examples – the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the African National Congress (ANC) – reveals that to achieve peace, negotiation happens first, and disarmament follows. 

In the case of the IRA, political participation replaced armed struggle and made disarmament possible. The goal of the IRA was to force Britain out of Northern Ireland and unite Ireland. The latter half of the 20th century was a time of great conflict in Northern Ireland, with fighting between Irish nationalists (mostly Catholic) and Protestant unionists/loyalists who wanted to remain part of Britain. Over time, the two sides reached a military stalemate – the IRA couldn’t drive Britain out, and Britain couldn’t eliminate the IRA. The conflict transformed to political participation as Sinn Féin, the IRA’s political wing, began seriously participating in elections. 

The Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998. It created a power-sharing government between Catholics and Protestants and established that Northern Island’s constitutional status would only change through democratic means. It also mandated the “decommissioning of all paramilitary arms.” The process of disarmament took several years, but by 2005, the IRA’s supply was fully decommissioned. 

In South Africa, the ANC disarmed only after apartheid had been conquered. Following the 1960 Sharpeville massacre in which police killed 69 protestors, the ANC concluded that peaceful means would not be sufficient to topple the racist regime, forming an armed wing called Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). In the 1980s, South Africa became increasingly ungovernable; economic pressure from other countries added to the instability. The government finally realized that apartheid was unsustainable, and in 1990, the ANC was unbanned, and negotiations began that would pave the way for a new constitution and democratic elections in 1994. With the ANC about to take power in the elections, they ended their armed struggle, and disarmament was folded into state-building. After the transfer of power, MK fighters either integrated into the national army, demobilized, or retired. 

In both Northern Ireland and South Africa, disarmament was the consequence of political transformation, not the prerequisite for it. That is the critical distinction between those situations and the current one in Gaza. History suggests that disarmament works when it occurs at the end of a sequence that includes mutual ceasefire, political recognition, concrete concessions, and international guarantees. No significant insurgent group has ever accepted the deal Hamas is being offered, which is to disarm and then trust that things will improve. Without a clear path to sovereignty, without a clear future for Palestine, disarming Hamas makes no strategic sense for Palestinians. 

For the Board of Peace to achieve its goal of disarming Hamas, it is imperative that Israel’s occupation of Gaza ends. As long as Gaza’s borders, airspace, maritime access, and overall security environment remain under Israeli control, Hamas has a legitimate claim that resistance is necessary. The peace plan references Palestinian statehood only to the extent that if the Palestinian Authority reforms and Gaza redevelops, “conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.” This level of assurance is unacceptable. Palestine’s core grievances remain unresolved under the peace plan; at this point in time, Hamas’ disarmament just appears to be a further loss of leverage. 

If the end goal is peace in the Middle East, there must be greater recognition of Palestine’s right to self-determination. Occupation and peace are mutually exclusive. As uncertainty looms over the future of Gaza, one thing is clear: disarming Hamas is not the key to the political transformation required in the region.