Hamas isn’t even pretending to disarm anymore. That’s the assessment of an Israeli security official briefed on the regional process, who told Walla that two months ago the group was still trying to create a false impression of willingness to surrender its weapons. “Now it is not even doing that, and it is investing its efforts in preparing for a return to fighting,” the official stressed.
The warning comes as US officials and representatives of the Board of Peace prepare a field survey and mapping operation in the Gaza Strip, Walla learned on Tuesday. The goal is to identify geographically suitable locations where Hamas members would hand over their weapons under US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan.
The Terror Threat
Israeli military officials told Walla the Gaza Strip is closer to escalation than to reconstruction or a negotiated arrangement. They pointed to a list of developments on the ground. Hamas’s military wing is trying to rebuild its capabilities and strengthen its forces. Training exercises continue. Operatives are attempting to provoke confrontations with IDF troops along the Yellow Line.
There’s more. Intelligence warnings point to planned terrorist attacks, including concerns that Hamas will try to strike in the period leading up to Israel’s elections, with the aim of influencing the results.
The IDF and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) carry out an average of two to three targeted operations every day against Hamas operatives and commanders in Gaza. Some of those targeted took part in the October 7 attacks. Others are organizing terrorist attacks or trying to cross the Yellow Line.
What Hamas Is Actually Offering
The gap between Hamas’s conduct and Washington’s ambitions is, in the words of security officials familiar with the details, enormous. Under Hamas’s original demands, the organization would hand its weapons to a third party, which would safeguard them inside the Gaza Strip. Even that limited gesture comes with strings: commitments on reconstruction and an Israeli withdrawal.
In other words, the weapons would stay in Gaza. The terror group would get its rebuilding and its withdrawal first.
Washington’s Approach Puzzles Jerusalem
Israeli defense officials have expressed confusion at the American approach to Gaza’s postwar reconstruction. They say Washington wants to accelerate processes that appear to run counter to developments on the ground. The officials described an enormous gap between what Hamas is doing and what the US hopes to achieve by trading reconstruction for surrendered weapons.
Jerusalem’s position, according to assessments cited by security officials, is firm. Israel will oppose any reconstruction measures unless Hamas is disarmed in practice and the Gaza Strip is demilitarized. That means removing terrorist infrastructure, weapons, and terrorists.
The sequencing is the whole argument. Israeli officials see a Hamas that is retraining, regrouping, and probing the Yellow Line, while the diplomatic track assumes a group on the verge of surrender. The field survey will map locations for a weapons handover that Hamas, according to Israeli security officials, has stopped even pretending to consider.
The Board of Peace and US officials haven’t publicly addressed the Israeli concerns in the reporting available. What’s on the record is the intelligence picture: a rearming terror army, daily Israeli strikes on its commanders, and warnings of attacks timed to Israel’s election season.