Donald Trump announced the complete disarmament of Hamas. The document behind the announcement runs to 15 articles, and the one that deals with weapons uses narrower words: decommission and store.
The latest. Hamas said on Friday 31 July 2026 that it has accepted a written roadmap for the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire, confirming it to the Associated Press and to Anadolu Ajansı, and setting out its terms in a statement on Telegram. AP obtained and verified the text. Türkiye is one of four guarantor states, alongside the United States, Egypt and Qatar. Israel has issued no official comment, is not a signatory, and an Israeli official said on Thursday that there will be no Israeli withdrawal until Hamas is disarmed and Gaza demilitarized. The roadmap puts the first obligation on Israel.
What the text says
The document is titled a roadmap for completing the implementation of Trump's comprehensive peace plan in Gaza, and it runs to 15 articles.
Article 8 is the weapons article. It provides for a process to decommission and store heavy weapons, military production sites, weapons depots and tunnels. That process begins only after three things have happened: Israel completing its remaining commitments under the Sharm el-Sheikh protocol, the entry into Gaza of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, and the deployment of the International Stabilization Force.
None of those three has happened.
The same article says the process is linked to a phased Israeli withdrawal, that Palestinian factions take part in it, and that no weapons go to Israel or to any non-Palestinian party. Article 13 says Israeli forces complete their phased withdrawal consistent with article 8. The two obligations are tied to each other.
Trump's own summary put them in sequence. "As disarmament is completed, Israeli forces will withdraw," he wrote on Truth Social. The text he was describing does not say that.
Article 2 does something his summary left out entirely. It says Israel shall fully complete, without delay, all remaining commitments under the Sharm el-Sheikh protocol, and it names the cessation of military operations in particular. That is the first operative obligation in the roadmap, and it falls on Israel.
The police, and then everyone else
The part that happens soonest is smaller than the announcement suggests.
Article 7 transfers all police weapons to the National Committee when it enters Gaza. US and Board of Peace officials, briefing reporters on anonymity terms set by the White House, told AP that the Gaza police handover does not cover the vast majority of Hamas fighters, and that heavy weaponry is not in that part of the agreement.
A senior Hamas negotiator told the BBC that the talks were long and extremely difficult, and that Hamas held out for the wording "inventorying and storing weapons" under Palestinian oversight rather than any handover to Israel. That wording is what article 8 delivers.
Ghazi Hamad, of Hamas's political bureau and its negotiating delegation, told Anadolu Ajansı the agreement is a comprehensive package of reciprocal and simultaneous commitments, and that phase two depends on Israel completing phase one first. "If Israel does not implement, we will not implement ours either," he said. He called the agreement painful and difficult, and said Hamas took it because of the conditions in Gaza.
In its Telegram statement, Hamas attached its approval of the heavy-weapons provision to a list that ends at guarantees of Palestinian self-determination and an independent Palestinian state. Israel's government rejects that outcome.
Articles 1 and 8 both close on a credible path toward Palestinian self-determination and statehood.
Türkiye is one of four guarantors
Türkiye's guarantor role is not new, and Friday did not create it. The roadmap sits on top of the Sharm el-Sheikh protocol, the framework whose unfinished commitments articles 2 and 8 both require Israel to complete, and the guarantor states have been inside this process throughout. Their representatives began second-phase contacts with Palestinian groups in Cairo on 7 June, according to Anadolu Ajansı.
What Friday settled is the roster and one exclusion. AP reports the guarantors are the United States, Türkiye, Egypt and Qatar, and that Israel is not a signatory, the agreement being between Hamas and the guarantor states. A person with knowledge of the process told AP that Israel is fully involved, and a US official said Israel was consulted at every step.
Under article 2, the International Verification Committee that certifies each phase is made up of representatives of the guarantors, the Board of Peace and the stabilization force. No source has said who Türkiye will send.
Israel's position is the inverse of the text
An Israeli official said on Thursday, anonymously in line with government protocol, that there will be no Israeli withdrawal before Hamas is disarmed and Gaza demilitarized. Set that against articles 2, 8 and 13, which put Israel's cessation of operations first and tie the withdrawal to the weapons process step by step.
Earlier on Thursday, hours before Trump posted, a senior Israeli security official had already dismissed the reports that Hamas was ready to agree. He told Channel 12, in remarks carried by Anadolu Ajansı, that Israel is wholly skeptical of the group's intent, calling it eyewash and propaganda.
AP reports that Israel currently controls around 60 percent of Gaza, mostly destroyed and depopulated ground, while most of the territory's two million Palestinians live in the remainder. Israel goes to a general election in October, and Netanyahu faces a hard reelection campaign.
Where the 200-day figure comes from
A Board of Peace official told AP the surrender of heavy weapons and the decommissioning of tunnels could take between 200 and 350 days. AP notes that this timeline does not appear in the agreement it obtained.
What the text does specify is shorter and more modest: a timetable and implementation mechanisms prepared within 14 days of all parties approving the roadmap, extendable by the verification committee. Annex 1, which article 2 says details Israel's remaining obligations, has not been published.
The war these terms are being written over
Behind all of it sits Israel's genocide in Gaza, a characterization grounded in Türkiye's official position, in the proceedings before the International Court of Justice under the Genocide Convention, and in findings by UN human-rights bodies.
Gaza's health ministry put the toll since October 2023 at 73,335 killed and 174,052 wounded as of 29 July, in figures carried by Anadolu Ajansı. Since the ceasefire took effect on 10 October 2025, the ministry has recorded 1,214 killed and 3,977 wounded in Israeli strikes, most of them women and children.
A member of the committee that is supposed to walk into Gaza and start all of this told AP on Friday, speaking anonymously, that they do not expect to get in for at least two months.