The Gaza Peace Council clarified Monday evening that the IDF's withdrawal beyond the yellow line depends on full disarmament of all weapons, including light weapons, heavy weapons, and tunnels. The statement, issued after a meeting between Council head Nikolay Mladenov and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, comes after Hamas officials last week suggested the process would only involve storing weapons, raising the question of how to store tunnel infrastructure.
The Gaza Peace Council on Monday evening explicitly rejected Hamas's interpretation that the disarmament process would only involve storing weapons, stating that the full withdrawal of IDF forces beyond the yellow line requires the complete disarmament of all weapons categories, including tunnel infrastructure. The statement, issued after a meeting between Council head Nikolay Mladenov and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, noted that the storage question is particularly complex for tunnel networks, which cannot be easily warehoused.
The clarification follows a sequence of reports on Monday. At 19:17 Jerusalem, a Council source told The Zioneer that the body had presented a track to remove Hamas from both weapons and governing power. At 20:26, the Council issued a series of statements emphasizing that the IDF withdrawal beyond the yellow line is contingent on full disarmament of light weapons, heavy weapons, and tunnels, supervised by the International Stabilization Force and the Implementation Review Committee. The Zioneer published a bulletin at 21:06 summarizing the Council's position. The new statement addresses the specific challenge of tunnel storage, which Hamas officials had suggested would be handled through simple storage.
As The Zioneer reported on Friday, the broader framework envisions weapons stored under international oversight at designated sites within Gaza, remaining under Palestinian control, with a technocratic government assuming civil and security authority. The "zero trust" mechanism was designed to verify each step of the agreement rather than rely on mutual goodwill. The Peace Council's latest statement reinforces that the disarmament requirement applies to all military infrastructure, including tunnels.
What remains open is the practical question of how tunnel networks—which are embedded infrastructure, not portable weapons—can be stored or dismantled under the agreed framework. The Peace Council's statement acknowledged this difficulty without providing a specific solution.
5 developments
- DevelopingPolitical source: Israel reiterates no withdrawal from Gaza yellow line without disarmament, contrasting Peace Council
- DevelopingStein reports new clarifications on Gaza deal: weapons stored under police control, withdrawal conditional
- StrongTrump says IDF withdrawal after full Hamas disarmament; Mladenov calls for phased pullout
- StrongMladenov: Gaza reconstruction, IDF withdrawal hinge on Hamas disarmament
Source and signal
- Open-source intake