Hamas may be allowed to keep small arms under the United States’ plan for demilitarizing the terror group, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, citing officials familiar with drafts of the plan.
The plan would, however, require Hamas surrender all weapons capable of striking Israel. Details of the plan are also subject to change as further drafts are crafted, the NYT noted.
The NYT reported that a team consisting of US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and former United Nations official Nickolay Mladenov plans to “share the document with Hamas within weeks.”
The officials, who anonymously spoke to the NYT, regarding the draft noted that the process of Hamas’s proposed weapons surrender has not yet been outlined and that it is not clear who would take ownership of the relinquished arms.
Details of the draft appear to be similar to previously publicly discussed proposals, including a January presentation given by Kushner in Davos, Switzerland.
Kushner’s Davos presentation on Gaza detailed that “heavy weapons” would need to be “decommissioned immediately” to facilitate successful demilitarization, according to the NYT.
Unspecified “personal arms,” however, would be “registered and decommissioned” at the direction of the new technocratic committee set to take control of the Gaza Strip, the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), according to the Kushner presentation.
Speaking on US efforts to disarm Hamas, White House spokesman Dylan Johnson stated that “the United States is working closely with all parties and mediators to ensure full implementation of the plan,” and, he added, “to advance a durable security framework that supports long-term stability in the region and prosperity for Gaza.”
Hamas has repeatedly rebuked disarmament efforts.
Khaled Mashaal, Hamas’s top external political head, decried disarmament as “an attempt to make [Gazans] an easy victim to be eliminated and easily exterminated by Israel” during the Al Jazeera Forum in Doha on Sunday.
Mashaal added that while “it is necessary to provide an environment that allows reconstruction and relief and ensures that the war does not reignite,” such a situation can be acquired through “great effort” but “not an approach of disarmament.”
Amichai Stein and Danielle Greyman-Kennard contributed to this report.