WASHINGTON — The US-controlled Board of Peace accomplished what many observers thought was impossible until just two weeks ago, when it coaxed Hamas to accept a proposal that envisions the terror group handing over all of its weapons.

Briefing reporters hours after Hamas approved the disarmament proposal, a senior US official indicated that its implementation could begin immediately because approval from Israel wasn’t even necessary to move forward.

The US official reasoned that Israel had already, in September, agreed to US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan for ending the Gaza war. Jerusalem was just being asked to uphold its commitments from that umbrella framework, whereas the 15-point disarmament plan was a matter for the Board of Peace and Hamas only.

But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saw things differently, and came out against the disarmament plan, insisting that the Israel Defense Forces would not conduct any of the withdrawals required by both the 15- and the 20-point proposals.

Recognizing that Israeli buy-in is in fact needed, the Board of Peace engaged intensively with Jerusalem to secure its support. But if any changes are made to the disarmament proposal, that would risk losing the hard-fought support of Hamas for it.

Accordingly, the Board of Peace has maintained significant ambiguity as to how its postwar Gaza reconstruction is supposed to proceed, with decisions sometimes being made on an ad hoc basis.

An example of this can be seen in its definition of the Yellow Line.

Under the terms of the October 2025 ceasefire deal with Hamas, Israel was required to pull its forces to that demarcation, which roughly divided Gaza into eastern and western halves. The pull-back left the IDF in control of 53 percent of the Strip.

But that ceasefire deal was only the first phase of Trump’s 20-point plan. The second phase envisioned Hamas handing over its weapons and Israel withdrawing completely from the Strip.

As phase two disarmament talks with Hamas stalled, Netanyahu directed the IDF to occupy 70% of Gaza, pushing the Yellow Line several hundred meters toward the coast and further shrinking the territory where some 2 million Palestinians were forced to live.

Despite the apparent flouting of the October ceasefire’s withdrawal terms, the Board of Peace refrained from demanding Israel reverse course, with some officials from the panel assuring Mideast mediating countries Egypt, Qatar and Turkey that they would do so once Hamas agreed to the board’s disarmament plan, an Arab diplomat told The Times of Israel.

After months of negotiating, the terror group did just that on July 30.

The approved proposal for Hamas’s gradual disarmament requires Israel to “fully complete, without delay, all remaining commitments........

© The Times of Israel