All obstacles to the handover of Hezbollah and Hamas’s weapons

Tel Aviv. For the first time since 7 October, the Middle East is facing a scenario that seemed unrealistic just a few months ago: the simultaneous disarmament of the main Iranian-backed militias, Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon. These are two distinct but closely linked processes that could represent an attempt to transform Israel’s military success into a new regional political balance. On the table is the plan drawn up by the Board of Peace for Gaza, based on the negotiating framework proposed by the Trump Administration. The aim is to dismantle Hamas’s military apparatus, handing over light and heavy weapons, depots, tunnels and production facilities to an international stabilisation force and, subsequently, to a Palestinian technocratic committee tasked with administering the Strip. In theory, once the process is complete, the principle of ‘one authority, one law, one weapon’ should apply.

As Amit Segal, an expert on Israeli politics, presenter on Channel 12 and columnist for Israel HaYom, explains to Il Foglio, “it is precisely on this last point that the greatest concerns on the Israeli side arise. The document provides, in fact, for the disarmament of heavy weapons and the neutralisation of tunnels, but leaves so-called ‘personal weapons’ under the jurisdiction of future Palestinian legislation. This is a deliberately ambiguous formulation, fuelling fears that Hamas might relinquish formal government without actually losing control of the territory, by channelling part of its arsenal into the future security forces.” The timing is also a point of contention between the parties. Israel insists that disarmament must precede any IDF withdrawal from the Strip. Hamas argues the opposite: no handover of weapons before the Israeli withdrawal. “It is a clash that is as substantial as it is symbolic,” says Segal. “For Hamas, it would be politically devastating to show its men handing over weapons to Israel; hence the idea of entrusting the process to an international force. For the Netanyahu government, however, any withdrawal before the organisation is dismantled risks resulting in a loss of negotiating leverage.” Behind this technical dispute lies a deeper problem: a total lack of mutual trust: “Israel fears that Hamas might change its image without actually losing its military capability, whilst Hamas is trying to avoid an image of surrender that would undermine its legitimacy within the Palestinian world.”

The same principle appears to be emerging on the Lebanese front as well: “The massive explosion that destroyed the Beaufort underground complex – the historic operational centre of Hezbollah’s Bader unit – is not merely a military response to the breach of the ceasefire following the launch of a drone against Israeli forces. Above all, it is a political message: Israel intends to prevent Hezbollah from retaining the infrastructure necessary to rebuild its offensive capability, even in the event of a future diplomatic agreement.” For years, Hezbollah has been building a network of bunkers and tunnels in southern Lebanon, funded by Iran. Destroying this infrastructure would drastically reduce the likelihood of the group being able to plan another invasion of Galilee.

In both contexts, the issue is not merely one of eliminating thousands of rifles or kilometres of tunnels, but of deciding who will hold the monopoly on the use of force once the war is over: “If Hamas and Hezbollah were to truly give up their military structures, the entire regional axis built by Iran over the last twenty years would suffer the hardest blow in its history,” says Segal. However, the political unknown remains. Netanyahu is now on the eve of an election campaign, and any territorial concession risks becoming a domestic liability. But without a compromise on the sequence of disarmament and withdrawal, “it is unlikely that any agreement will ever reach the operational stage. Paradoxically, the main obstacle no longer seems to be the possibility of envisaging a Middle East without Hamas or with a significantly weakened Hezbollah. The real challenge is to determine whether the parties will be able to trust one another enough to take the first step.”