THE NEW YORK TIMES: Trump’s announcement of Gaza deal raises many unanswered questions

TEL AVIV — Since a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas was reached in October, negotiations for a more durable peace have largely stalled. So when President Donald Trump on Thursday announced a “HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT” of Hamas and other armed groups in the Gaza Strip, it caught many by surprise.

Nearly 11 hours since Trump announced the agreement, neither Israel nor Hamas has issued an official statement acknowledging the deal, raising concerns about their eagerness to implement its clauses.

Instead, both sides took a more informal approach to addressing their supporters.

Hamas, the militant group that controls the most populated parts of Gaza, sent Ghazi Hamad, one of its negotiators, to speak with Arabic-language TV stations. “We fought to reach the best formula to save our Palestinian people in Gaza,” he told Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based broadcaster.

The Israeli government issued a statement on Thursday evening — before Trump had even made his announcement. The Israeli statement, citing an anonymous “diplomatic official,” said Israel had conveyed reservations to Tony Blair, the former British prime minister who serves as a top official on the Board of Peace, the international organization that has been negotiating with Hamas and Israel on Gaza’s future.

Hamas’ weapons have been a key sticking point over months of talks in Egypt, one of the main mediating countries. The Board of Peace has demanded that the group gradually give up all of its arsenal — a position that Israeli officials have contended Hamas will not accept.

Armed struggle against Israel has long been central to Hamas’ ideology and a means to stay in power. Many members of the group view any deal in which they would give up their weapons as tantamount to surrender.

On Friday, Hamad said what was being discussed was Hamas “storing” its weapons “under the responsibility” of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, a committee of Palestinian technocrats working under the Board of Peace’s supervision.

The details of the agreement have not been made public yet, including the clauses on Hamas’ weapons. Hamas officials have said Israel must first fulfill its commitments under the October ceasefire agreement before anything happens to its weapons.

Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace’s high representative for Gaza, wrote on social media that “implementation and verification have to be real.”

“Withdrawal must move in lock step with decommissioning,” he wrote, referring to the withdrawal of Israeli troops and the disarmament of Palestinian armed groups.

Since the ceasefire, the Israeli military has carried out frequent airstrikes that it has said were targeting Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the second largest militant group in Gaza.

More than 1,200 people have been in killed in the territory since the ceasefire in October, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. The Israeli military has also continued to take over land in Gaza beyond the withdrawal line specified in the October agreement.

Hamas could be attempting to put the onus on Israel to make concessions, analysts said.

“For months, the narrative has been that Hamas doesn’t want to disarm,” said Shira Efron, chair of Israel policy at the Rand Corp., a U.S.-based research institute. “Based on what we know so far, it appears Hamas is kicking the ball to Israel, knowing very well how difficult it will be for the Israeli government to execute this agreement, especially any type of withdrawal of its forces.”

Efron said it was possible Israel and Hamas could soon return to “a familiar blame game,” accusing each other of failing to uphold the agreement announced by Trump while little change happens on the ground.

Ibrahim Madhoun, a Palestinian analyst close to Hamas, said that the militant group’s goal was to end the war but that it was concerned Israel would find a way to escape implementing the agreement.

“Hamas did everything it could to deliver a deal based on reciprocity and simultaneous implementation,” he said. “Still, there are fears Israel could obstruct it.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.