The so-called Board of Peace (BoP), the US-led body created to oversee President Trump’s Gaza plan, has walked back a key part of the Hamas disarmament agreement after its representatives met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
When the deal was initially announced, statements from President Trump and the BoP’s top envoy for Gaza, Bulgarian politician Nickolay Mladenov, said that Hamas’s disarmament would happen as Israeli troops withdraw from Gaza. “Withdrawal must move in lockstep with decommissioning,” Mladenov wrote on X.
But after Mladenov met with Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Monday, the BoP said that Israel’s withdrawal would happen only after the “decommissioning” of Hamas’s weapons and blamed the understanding that the two would happen simultaneously on “inaccurate reports” despite Mladenov’s earlier statement.
“Contrary to inaccurate reports, we note that the withdrawal of the IDF beyond the Yellow Line will take place only once decommissioning is complete, as Hamas committed to the mediators. This applies to light weapons, heavy weapons, and the tunnels alike,” the BoP said on X.
Drop Site News reporter Jeremy Scahill, who has Hamas sources and has followed the negotiations closely, said the BoP’s post is “filled with lies about what Hamas agreed to & it’s part of a longstanding pattern: When Palestinian negotiators make agreements, the Israelis then demand new terms and the US and its lackeys pretend like these new edicts are part of the deal and then blame Hamas.”
Israeli officials have made clear they have no intention of following the plan, as a senior Israeli official quoted by Israeli media as Netanyahu met with Mladenov said that Israel would not fully withdraw from Gaza and would retain its ability to strike “any threat,” meaning its attacks will continue.
Following the announcement of Hamas agreeing to the disarmament plan, which would involve the group handing its weapons to a new Palestinian body, known as the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, Israel escalated its attacks in Gaza, killing at least 19 Palestinians, including multiple children, on Sunday.
Mladenov offered criticism of the Israeli strikes but did not mention Israel by name. “Two days of strikes across Gaza have killed civilians and destroyed medical supplies that people depend on. This comes after intense efforts by the [Board of Peace] and the mediators (Egypt, Turkiye, Qatar and the US) to bring the Palestinian factions in Gaza to agree to a Roadmap on the full implementation of President Trump’s plan, to hand over civilian governance and to decommission their weapons,” Mladenov wrote on X.
“Both parties carry obligations under the Comprehensive Plan and the Sharm el-Sheikh deal that secured the release of all hostages,” he added, referring to the October 2025 ceasefire deal, which Israel has violated with constant attacks that have killed at least 1,250 Palestinians since the agreement was signed, according to the latest numbers from Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Israeli attacks continued in Gaza on Monday, with at least two Palestinians reported killed and several others wounded by an Israeli strike on Gaza City. Hamas officials have maintained that they won’t begin the disarmament plan as long as Israel continues its attacks and until it withdraws its troops back to the “yellow line,” the initial line that was supposed to divide the IDF-occupied side of Gaza from the rest of the Strip, but the IDF has taken more territory, another violation of the ceasefire agreement.
