It is not precisely known how far the question of permanently disarming Hamas in Gaza has advanced. Will its weapons be surrendered in the manner Israel wants, letting Benjamin Netanyahu present the outcome as a major victory? Or will the matter be handled in a way that ends Hamas's armed role while allowing it to save face?
Whatever form the process takes and however it is carried out, the true significance of the event would be the end of armed struggle's role in the Palestinian situation, in both its fighting and its negotiating dimensions.
Let us return to a not-so-distant time - to the day when Yasser Arafat, the ultimate man of the rifle, shook hands with Yitzhak Rabin, the man of Israel's gamble, to the conclude the Oslo Accords. That handshake was read as a farewell to arms. The Israelis saw in it the start of a new era with their principal adversary - one that would give them the security they had lacked throughout their long wars with the Palestinians.
Arafat gave up the gun in exchange for an initial political agreement with the occupiers of his country and his people. Under it, he returned home. Before him, with him, and after him, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians returned as well - none of whom could have done so without the Oslo gamble and that historic handshake, which promised a Palestinian state beginning with limited, temporary self-rule.
The hardline pairing of Ariel Sharon and Netanyahu destroyed what Oslo had achieved. They didn’t stop there: they turned the preliminary steps toward the hoped-for peace into a war of extermination. Within a few years this brought the reoccupation of the West Bank, destruction of Gaza, and reduction of the Palestinian Authority, which Oslo had created as a precursor to statehood, to a hostage struggling merely to survive.
During what was billed as a historic experiment, and after Sharon and Netanyahu reneged on the promises their predecessors Rabin and Peres had made, Arafat felt driven to fall back on the rifle. His calculation was that renewed armed resistance might push Israel back to the Oslo process and onward toward the goal of a Palestinian state. The gamble failed. Its consequences are now visible on the ground, beginning with the elimination of Arafat himself and extending to the destruction of Gaza, the reoccupation of the West Bank, and threats to annex it.
The Palestinians did not abandon arms entirely. As Oslo eroded, the new reality fueled armed groups in the West Bank, Jerusalem included. Through Hamas and its allies, it also created a fighting front in Gaza that managed to build the infrastructure of armed resistance. That resistance found parties willing to finance it and supply it the means to survive, persist, and press on Israel. This turned Gaza into an arena of successive battles, alongside a suffocating blockade Israel imposed from the moment the first Hamas projectile was fired at it.
Efforts led by many countries failed to loosen Israel's grip on Gaza or to head off its devastating military incursions. Then came the major operation of October 7, 2023, followed by Israel's all-out retaliatory response.
In resisting the Israeli ground invasion of the Strip, Hamas used every military means at its disposal. Despite the war's length and the losses on both sides, the result - given the balance of power between Hamas and Israel - was always going to fall to the side with overwhelming superiority on land, at sea, and in the air. That is what brought us to the present.
Israel occupied three-quarters of Gaza and, through siege and firepower, established control over the remaining quarter, where Hamas kept only limited authority. The issue of weapons, and the necessity of eliminating them, was thus raised as a decisive Israeli, American, and perhaps international condition for completing the American initiative. There can be no start to reconstruction or partial Israeli withdrawals until Israel decides that the story of the weapons is over - that not a single bullet will be fired at it from Gaza for years to come.
Since the American initiative was introduced and endorsed regionally and internationally at Sharm el-Sheikh and in Washington, where the Board of Peace headed by Trump was inaugurated, Israel has gone on using every weapon at its disposal without drawing any military response from Hamas.
Israel met little meaningful resistance as it advanced through Gaza. It also imposed itself as the holder of a veto over every step the Board of Peace takes regarding the territory, including which countries' stabilization forces would be allowed in and where they would deploy, how far Gaza's civilian committee could carry out its service work, and the vetting of those working with the committee and of residents moving between areas.
While Hamas could still use its weapons, its insistence on keeping them was understandable, and some saw a reasonable logic in the position. But once using them was no longer possible, matters led Hamas, in the end, to agree to end their role. What remains in dispute is how that conclusion will be presented, not whether it can be reversed.
Once Hamas concedes that the role of weapons has ended, a question inevitably arises: Is Gaza's rifle the last in this phase of the Palestinian struggle? And will giving it up mark the start of a settlement under the American initiative approved by the Security Council - the initiative that referred to a Palestinian state for the first time since the Council's establishment?
Logic suggests that the disappearance of the last rifle does not mean the disappearance of a deep and far-reaching cause - one in which nine-tenths of the world's countries have recognized the Palestinian people's right to self-determination and to the establishment of their state.
The rifle has its moment; popular and political struggle, in all its forms, has all the time in the world. Once the weapons file in Gaza is closed, the Board of Peace's ability to implement every stage of its plan will become clear. This is what Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and the wider world want.
The birth was hard, and what follows looks equally hard. The real issue is not the modest store of weapons Hamas still holds. It is the story of a great cause that Israel has yet to be convinced is the defining cause of our era.
