In the weeks after Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire agreement intended to end the war in Gaza, top Hamas officials cast doubt on a key element of Trump’s 20-point plan: their disarmament.

Hamas leader Khalil Al-Hayya, for example, suggested the group would only hand over its weapons to a future Palestinian state.

It took nearly 10 months of start-and-stop negotiations for Hamas and the Board of Peace to finally reach this point. Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace official charged with brokering that agreement, acknowledged Thursday “there were several points when I did not believe we would make it.”

So there’s no question that this deal marks a major milestone toward making President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan a reality.

But, as Mladenov acknowledged: Now comes the tough part.

The new 15-point roadmap is sequenced: Israel must take certain steps before Hamas takes its own, and vice versa. And Hamas is emphatic that it won’t begin any handover of weapons until Israel complies with its commitments under the deal: stopping its near-daily attacks on Gaza, moving back to the agreed-upon “yellow line” and allowing a surge of humanitarian aid.

And that’s where we’re already seeing the challenges emerge. While the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office has yet to officially comment, an Israeli official told CNN Israel won’t withdraw any troops “from the current ‘yellow line’ without the genuine disarmament of Hamas.” That could be a problem, since the “current” yellow line has swallowed at least 4% of Gazan territory beyond the October agreement.

And the reaction in Israel underscored the political dilemma Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces fewer than three months before elections, with figures across the political spectrum slamming the disarmament agreement as a capitulation.

“The State of Israel must not accept a reality in which Hamas survives, rearms, and waits for the opportunity to carry out the next massacre!” Gadi Eisenkott, Netanyahu’s chief rival to be prime minister, posted.

But Netanyahu is facing another pressure in Washington, where US officials have made clear they expect him to adhere to the deal, warning Trump would be “very, very disappointed” if Israel doesn’t comply. Those are the same officials Netanyahu needs to help him achieve the objectives he laid out in another, larger war: the one with Iran.