For the first time in a long time, there is a glimmer of hope for the Middle East. After two years of war, representatives of Israel and Hamas have sat down in Cairo and signed a deal brokered by the President of the United States, Donald Trump. A tentative ceasefire is underway; earlier, clouds of dust and smoke could be seen spiralling into the sky outside Gaza City, as the IDF withdrew from its siege of the area. If the deal is fully ratified and implemented, this withdrawal will continue, allowing humanitarian aid to surge into war-torn Gaza. Crucially, the 48 Israeli hostages, 20 of whom are believed to be alive, are set to return home to their loved ones – perhaps as early as Monday.

The news of a brief respite in the conflict was greeted widely by both Israelis and Palestinians with jubilation. For Israelis, it holds out the hope of ending a conflict that has deepened divisions at home and isolated Israel from many of her erstwhile allies. For Palestinians, the ceasefire promises to deliver hope of a new dawn, a day beyond daily bombardment and devastation.

Yet it would be premature to conclude that peace is about to break out, either in Gaza or across the Middle East. The deal must first be ratified officially by the Israeli government, following a meeting of Benjamin Netanyahu and the security cabinet later today (Thursday). Netanyahu has signalled that the cabinet is likely to consent to the deal. Yet points of controversy remain for its hardline members: the ultra-nationalist ministers, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, may yet scupper the deal. In particular, there are reports that the final list of Palestinian prisoners to be released in return for the Israeli hostages has not yet been agreed.

On the other hand, Hamas, while much decapitated and weakened by the last two years of warfare, isolated from its patrons in Tehran, and under severe pressure from Turkey and the Arab states, is still around. It may be running out of road, but it still has options. Like Hezbollah in nearby Lebanon, so long as the group has its weapons, and its most militant members refuse to give them up, the path from this brutal war towards a durable peace will be far from straightforward.

It has been observed by many that Hamas has not given its unqualified support to President Trump’s 20-point plan. While the group has agreed to release the Israeli hostages, it has been more ambiguous or non-committal about other aspects of the programme. The negotiations in Cairo managed to gloss over this by referring to the ceasefire deal as merely the ‘first phase’ of the Trump plan. Notably, the group has not agreed to give up its weapons, demilitarise the Strip, or renounce power in a postwar Gaza. These could yet prove to be the points over which President Trump’s dramatic intervention unravels.

Put simply, the disarmament of Hamas matters because it is the vital key that unlocks the rest of Trump’s peace plan. Without disarmament, the IDF is unlikely to continue its phased withdrawal from the strip; the envisaged International Stabilisation Force, staffed by troops from Arab and other Islamic states, is unlikely to materialise; and without security, the aid and investment needed to rebuild the strip and its civil society will not be forthcoming. The ‘Board of Peace’ overseen by President Trump and former British prime minister Tony Blair will have no peace to preside over.

So how could Hamas be disarmed? What precedents might be followed? Here there are no easy answers, but examining the nature of the group can shed some light on the challenges that may be involved with demilitarising Gaza.

Like most militant Islamist groups and terrorist organisations, Hamas is not a monolithic entity but a coalition of competing military, political and social wings. It also exists in alliance, sometimes uneasily, with other armed factions in the Gaza Strip, such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Interestingly, the group’s genocidal rampage on 7 October 2023 may offer the perfect illustration of how these competing wings can work at cross purposes.

If there is hope for disarming Hamas, it will require isolating Hamas’ militant hardliners, or converting them into ‘softliners’. Achieving this will require uncomfortable compromises, since it probably means allowing militant jihadists, including some of the most violently antisemitic members of Hamas, to disarm in return for amnesty or exile abroad. Indeed, it may mean extending an amnesty, and a comfortable retirement, for some particularly unsavoury figures, such as Hamas’ current military commander in northern Gaza, Izz al-Din al-Haddad – a man who is believed to be one of the surviving architects of the 7 October attacks. This would be painful for any Israeli government, but perhaps especially so for Netanyahu, who vowed not to rest until Hamas was destroyed in its entirety.

There are precedents for such a process. The American-led troop ‘surge’ in Iraq in 2007-08, commanded by General David Petraeus, is one. Yet this was highly intensive in its use of military manpower and required a coherent ‘hearts and minds’ strategy to demobilise militants and facilitate civil reconciliation. If such a strategy were to be carried out in Gaza, it would require a force other than the Israeli military to do it.

Going further back into the past, there is the case of the Algerian army’s successful counter-insurgency against jihadist militants in the 1990s, during the country’s ‘black decade’. In this case, a general amnesty was issued that succeeded in demobilising thousands of jihadist fighters. Meanwhile, some of the leading jihadists were effectively pensioned off and absorbed into the regime’s civilian elite by offering them lucrative businesses. In short, they renounced the jihad and became part of the Algerian regime’s patronage network – a highly corrupt system that is maintained using the country’s vast oil revenues. Whether such a programme, or elements of it, could be implemented in the Gaza Strip, is not entirely clear.

In the end, whether Trump’s plan can solidify into a general peace will also ultimately depend on the president himself. Much hinges on how invested he is in turning what is currently a ceasefire, prisoner-swap and hostage deal into a workable, lasting peace framework. Given Trump’s previous record, it would be reasonable to expect that, if he can get the dramatic headline hostage deal over the line, he may lose interest in further deliberations. As with so many of Trump’s previous foreign policy shifts and breakthroughs, his attentions may wander elsewhere, and energy may dissipate as he grows tired of grappling with the detail.

The world watches with bated breath, hoping that this faint hope for the Middle East will not be snuffed out.