The deal’s own word is “lock step.” Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza moves with the decommissioning of Hamas’s guns, and the decommissioning moves with the withdrawal. Trump, who announced the agreement, said withdrawal must move in lock step with decommissioning. The phrase sounds like coordination and works like a veto: each side can stop the whole machine by refusing to move, and each side has already said it will.
The deal is called the Board of Peace and is being sold as historic. It promises to end what it calls the cycle of destruction and to open a credible path to Palestinian self-determination and statehood. In exchange, Hamas disarms and Israel leaves the enclave in phases, area by area, with the militias decommissioned as the army pulls back.
Then the caveats begin. Israel says it has serious concerns with the agreement. An Israeli official has said troops will not pull back without genuine disarmament by Hamas. That is the first veto, and it was issued before the ink dried.
The second veto is political, and it is the one nobody in Washington is quoting. Netanyahu’s government was built on the war. Its coalition partners came to power promising victory over Hamas, not phased withdrawals coordinated with the enemy. Israeli elections are approaching, and the analysts who watch the coalition say plainly that it will not support territorial withdrawals, or any concession that could be read as easing military pressure before disarmament. The cabinet has already approved a framework for what is being called a Gaza stabilization force, which is a polite way of saying the army stays.
This is the trap the deal built for itself. The withdrawal is linked to disarmament, so Israel can always say the link is broken. Hamas, for its part, is being asked to hand over its weapons to an occupying army in exchange for promises, and it has spent twenty years learning what Israeli promises are worth. The Telegraph, reporting on the deal, called it a zero-trust pact, which is the most honest description available. Both parties are being asked to trust the other side first, and both parties have built their entire politics on not doing that.
The ceasefire has held for six months, longer than anyone expected and shorter than anyone needs. The war that preceded it emptied Gaza and flattened its cities. The deal is the first real attempt to turn the ceasefire into an end, and it may be the last one for a while, because the mechanism it chose is the one thing both sides refuse to do: move first.
So the question is not whether Israel is ready to withdraw from Gaza. The government that would have to order the withdrawal is the same coalition that was elected on the war, and it is facing elections. It has already found the way to stay: the stabilization force, the serious concerns, the demand for genuine disarmament first. The lock step works exactly as designed. Neither side takes the first step, and the deal does not collapse, it just does not move.
The path to statehood is in the text. The guns are in the way of the text. And the guns are not going anywhere until someone in this deal decides to trust the other side. That person has not appeared yet, on either side of the line.