Decommission, not disarm: How Europe can help nudge Gaza toward peace

Twenty months of relentless war have not destroyed Hamas—but they may have reshaped it. The group’s offensive capabilities are depleted and its leadership is in exile or in hiding. Moderate factions are now signalling openness to a phased decommissioning of its arms. Meanwhile, cracks are appearing in Israel’s strategy, as top security voices concede that total disarmament is neither realistic nor enforceable. With negotiations for a 60-day ceasefire under way, European leaders could, with the right pressure, pave the way for a viable political settlement.

To disarm or not to disarm?

On the ground, Hamas is battered but unbroken. Though its rocket stockpiles are nearly depleted and it has lost thousands of fighters and key leaders, the group retains the ability to sustain a drawn-out insurgency against the Israel Defence Force with its remaining light weaponry. Having survived Israel’s military onslaught, the Islamist group is resolute in its refusal to disarm until Israel agrees to a full peace deal that ends its occupation of Palestinian territory. Hamas officials say they have little incentive to do so before then, pointing to Israeli vows to retain control over major chunks of Gaza and depopulate the enclave. “If we lay down our arms, Israel would stay in Gaza forever… settlers will move in,” as one Hamas leader put it.[1]

The Israeli government insists on total disarmament as a declaration of surrender and an end to armed resistance. Many Gazans, however, even those critical of Hamas, see disarmament as an existential threat—it would eliminate the final barrier to Israeli government plans to forcibly displace the entire population. Palestinians know from traumatic experience the dangers of surrendering arms. After the Palestine Liberation Organisation left Beirut in 1982, then under Israeli siege, Israeli-backed Lebanese Phalangist militias killed over 3,500 Palestinian civilians in the city’s Sabra and Shatila refugee camps as Israeli forces stood by.

Even if Hamas’s external leadership in Doha ordered its fighters to lay down their arms, many would likely defy them in current circumstances and could even move to more hardline groups like Islamic Jihad or the Mujahideen Brigades.

Hamas’s decommissioning offer

As a result, Hamas leaders oppose full disarmament, viewing it as capitulation. But, since last year, some of the more pragmatic and moderate voices have taken a new position, indicating openness to decommissioning the group’s offensive military capabilities.[2] In negotiations in February with Adam Boehler, the US special envoy for hostage response, Hamas reportedly offered to provide security guarantees to Israel by dismantling what is left of its tunnels into Israeli territory and committing to a long-term truce of 5-15 years that would see mutual and full cessation of hostilities in both Gaza and the West Bank. While these elements are not entirely new—Hamas has privately floated such long-term truces since at least 2008 as a minimum starting point for enabling peace talks—there are significant shifts in Hamas’s current stance. The group is now considerably more open to negotiations than it was before the current Gaza war, especially on sensitive issues like freezing its military production capability.

In April, Hamas reportedly offered to stop producing new weaponry, including rockets, which have been almost fully depleted during the current round of hostilities. Because there is little left to give up, it is far easier and less humiliating for Hamas to agree to stop production now than to publicly surrender or hand over existing stockpiles, which could provoke internal dissent.

It would also leave the group with light defensive weaponry, such as AK-47 rifles and anti-tank missiles, which pose little direct threat to Israel itself—a key Israeli purported concern. That concern could be further eased by a concerted international effort to remove the estimated 10,000 tonnes of unexploded ordnance littering Gaza. Israel has dropped over 100,000 tonnes of explosives on Gaza, some 10%-15% of which did not explode. This constitutes Hamas’s main source of rearmament by recycling them into rockets, mortars and bombs.

With no trust between the sides, Hamas’s and Israel’s actions would both need to be verified. A leaked Israeli-American outline from June envisions a force of four Arab countries, naming Egypt and the United Arab Emirates but not the others, taking over Gaza. But these countries have long refused to intervene in the absence of a ceasefire and political pathway towards a two-state solution, and against the will of the Palestinian Authority (PA). They also have little desire to fight Hamas on Israel’s behalf—meaning they would likely require Hamas’ consent before deploying.[3]

Hamas said last year it would accept an international “protection force” if it were also deployed to the West Bank.[4] The group also appears ready to relinquish its governance and security role in Gaza to either a PA technocratic government or a temporary independent administrative committee of technocrats and businesspeople.[5]

Hamas leaders envisage decommissioning as a gradual, negotiated process coupled with a genuine political track leading to an end of the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict.[6] In this regard, some Hamas officials evoke the example of Northern Ireland, where the Irish Republican Army agreed to full and mutual cessation of hostilities alongside negotiations and accepted to decommission their arms within the framework of the Good Friday agreement.[7]

Hamas’s current proposal amounts to a de facto offer of disarmament while allowing the group to save face—an outcome a former senior US diplomat characterised as “ideal for Israel”.

In May, a former senior US career diplomat noted in a discussion with the author that Hamas’s current proposal amounts to a de facto offer of disarmament while allowing the group to save face—an outcome he characterised as “ideal for Israel”. He further concurred that for Hamas to effectively enforce a ceasefire internally, including on other armed factions in Gaza, it requires at least the semblance of an armed posture.

Besides Hamas’s new stance, what makes this moment different is a growing Israeli recognition that Hamas cannot be militarily defeated outright.

A shift in Israel’s security circles

The Israeli government insists on total disarmament, but key voices within the security establishment are recognising the practical and political limits of this demand. Nadav Eyal, a journalist closely connected to Israel’s security establishment, in late June acknowledged that “Disarming is really not going to happen for two reasons. First of all, Hamas isn’t going to agree to that in the way we think about disarmament. And secondly, even if they will, no one will be able to verify it.” Israel’s outgoing domestic security service chief Ronen Bar earlier this month underscored the enduring nature of Hamas’s presence, stating bluntly, “As long as there are Palestinians in Gaza, there will be Hamas in Gaza.”

These candid assessments expose the futility of Israel’s maximalist stance, which ignores that dismantling Hamas militarily, without a political process, risks perpetuating the cycle of violence indefinitely. Removing Hamas without establishing a credible alternative risks even more insecurity as rival factions, jihadist groups and criminal gangs exploit the vacuum. Israel’s overt backing for criminal groups such as the Abu Shabab militia and clans linked to the Islamic State group has further heightened fears amongst Gazans of more bloodletting should Hamas disappear.

For any meaningful ceasefire or de-escalation, Israel must grapple with the reality that Hamas’s armed presence is deeply intertwined with the unresolved political status of Gaza’s Palestinian population. This resonates with an extensive 2008 RAND Corporation study, entitled “How Terrorist Groups End”, that examined the trajectory of 268 armed groups between 1968 and 2008. The study found that only 7% of them were defeated militarily and 40% (mainly small groups of less than 1,000 members) were dismantled when local police and intelligence agencies arrested or killed key members. The largest number of groups, 43%, ended through a transition to a political process, dialogue, conversion to unarmed politics and peaceful accommodation with their government.

Israel’s insistence on Hamas’s total capitulation through disarmament, in the absence of any credible path to Palestinian self-determination or territorial sovereignty, would merely entrench a reality of Israeli subjugation over Palestinians that has failed to deliver security for Israelis. By contrast, decommissioning offers a realistic pathway that can begin to unwind the logic of endless war.

None of this will be possible without a broader political track that can support Gaza’s recovery and reconstruction, and advance Palestinian self-determination. Hardliners within Hamas, especially those associated with its military wing in Gaza, are feeling increasingly emboldened by what they see as the group’s ability to endure almost two years of fighting and pull Israel into a war of attrition.[8] Convincing Hamas to make concessions on its weaponry will require meaningful political progress towards ending Israel’s occupation.

Nudging towards peace

European leaders, long sidelined in the diplomatic arena, now have a real chance to help chart a new course away from perpetual war. By seizing on the shifts within both Hamas and Israel’s security establishment, European policymakers can persuade their Israeli counterparts that there is potential now to begin an earnest dialogue if they climb down from their maximalist demands.

European politicians should begin by formally endorsing a decommissioning framework over unilateral disarmament, lending political and diplomatic weight to a phased process tied to a political horizon—building on Egypt’s reconstruction plan for Gaza presented in March which benefits from the support of Arab states, the PA and Hamas. European leaders should also engage the United States, which has a large influence over the Israeli government, to persuade Israeli policymakers of the merits of this plan.

In addition, the EU should push for an international oversight mechanism that includes ceasefire monitoring, independent verification of de-escalatory steps and protections for Palestinian civilians.

European leaders should go beyond expressions of neutrality or symbolic gestures; they must embrace proactive diplomacy that recognises the indispensability of a political solution that truly aligns Israel’s security concerns with Palestinian self-determination and Gaza’s reconstruction. Providing concrete support for a technocratic Palestinian governance transition in Gaza—financial, logistical and diplomatic—could help stabilise any post-Hamas order without entrenching Israeli occupation.  

Most urgently, European governments must condition military, economic and political cooperation with Israel on its demonstrable compliance with international humanitarian law, a halt to attacks on civilians and aid infrastructure and engagement in a credible diplomatic track to achieve Palestinian self-determination. They should signal that perpetuating the status quo will carry tangible political costs and that supporting a phased, verified decommissioning of Hamas is the only credible path toward lasting peace and stability in the region.

If Hamas’s shift towards more concessions is met with continued international silence, the group’s pragmatic voices will retreat—and the brief opening for decommissioning, and peace, will close.

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[1] Author’s conversation with a Hamas leader, Doha, April 2025.

[2] Author’s discussions with senior Hamas members, Turkey, May 2024; and Doha, between December 2024 and February 2025.

[3] Author’s conversations with senior Arab officials, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan and Geneva, between February and May 2025.

[4] Author’s conversations with Hamas leaders, Doha, December 2024 and February 2025.

[5] Author’s conversations with Hamas leaders, Doha, between August 2024 and April 2025.

[6] Author’s conversation with a Hamas leader, Doha, April 2025.

[7] Author’s discussions with Hamas leaders, Gaza and Doha, between 2021-2024.

[8] Author’s conversations with Hamas officials in Doha and Istanbul, July 2025.