Disarmament is necessary in Gaza. It is the only way to realize the goals articulated in the internationally endorsed 20-point plan laid out by President Donald Trump: a Gaza “redeveloped for the benefit of the people of Gaza” and that “does not pose a threat to its neighbors.” But a policy approach that makes disarmament a prerequisite for action on governance, recovery, freedom of movement for Gazans, and any credible political horizon is structurally and strategically counterproductive.
A more effective approach would treat disarmament as one track of an essential governing transition process, rather than as a stand-alone and ultimate achievement. The end goal should be a legitimate Palestinian governing order that delivers security based on the rule of law, restores viable life and livelihood conditions for Gazans, and sustains a political horizon that reconnects Gaza to a wider Palestinian future. Disarmament should be considered the security expression of that end — not a precondition demanded in a vacuum.
This distinction is not semantic. Reframing the approach changes the incentives for armed actors, civilians, regional states, and international implementers. It also avoids a trap that has repeatedly undermined post-conflict stabilization efforts: When people experience the future as conditional, humiliating, indeterminate, and indefinite, coercive power reemerges — whether as insurgency, criminal predation, or “local protection” economies.
A classic maxim becomes relevant in a new way: While power corrupts, what corrupts even more is abject powerlessness — the corrosion produced by humiliation, blocked horizons, and the daily logic of survival. In Gaza, powerlessness does not yield passivity; it brings about shadow authority, weaponized patronage, and recruitment economies. A disarmament strategy that deepens powerlessness — by making daily life contingent on political compliance with no credible destination — will not de-weaponize Gaza. It will merely change who holds the weapons.
Core principle: Parallel, not sequential
Treating disarmament as a means rather than an end starts with a simple operational rule: Disarmament must proceed in parallel with the construction of a legitimate governing authority. The two processes are mutually reinforcing; neither should be allowed to serve as a veto of progress on the other.
That is also the central distinction between a stabilization approach that endures and one that cycles back into violence. When disarmament is framed as “surrender first, benefits later,” armed actors conceal, fragment, and reconstitute. When it is framed “as weapons recede, normal life verifiably returns under a lawful Palestinian authority,” weapons become a liability rather than an asset.
What other transitions teach us
Iraq: Exclusion plus a vacuum is combustible
The cautionary lesson from the experience of the United States in Iraq is not that the vetting of civil authority and security services personnel is wrong. It is that the combination of a broad, punitive exclusion and a security vacuum is explosive.
In 2003, the Coalition Provisional Authority issued Order No. 1 on de-Ba’athification, removing senior party members from positions of authority. It then issued Order No. 2, dissolving key security entities, including the Iraqi military and associated structures. A substantial body of retrospective analysis argues these decisions alienated large numbers of Iraqis, weakened state capacity, and fueled insurgent mobilization by creating a toxic mix of unemployment, humiliation, and grievance.
The relevance for Gaza is clear: Disarmament pursued as mass exclusion, particularly when carried out in a security vacuum, will create a labor pool for violent entrepreneurship. Gaza’s armed ecosystem is not only ideological. It is also economic, protective, and status based. If people lose income, dignity, and safety while being asked to surrender their last form of leverage, the result will be fragmentation, concealment, and reconstitution — not durable peace. Armed power will fragment: Instead of one (or a few) recognizable command structures, weapons and fighters will disperse into smaller, more local, more transactional nodes. Capabilities will be concealed, as weapons, logistics, finances, and communications go underground. And armed groups will reconstitute, with dispersed pieces recombining over time, after an initial “disarmament” push, into new or adapted formations — sometimes rebranding, sometimes merging.
Northern Ireland: Decommissioning worked because it was embedded in a settlement
By contrast, in Northern Ireland, decommissioning succeeded because weapons were treated as one piece of an overall settlement, supported by independent verification and sequencing that avoided performative surrender.
The 1998 Good Friday Agreement created the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) to monitor and verify the process. Progress was slow and contested, but it moved forward because it was tied to a broader political framework with a credible destination and face-saving compliance mechanisms.
The lesson for Gaza is worth heeding: A viable pathway needs third-party verification, time, and sequencing that turns weapons into a negotiable transition cost — not an existential surrender. The critical variable is not speed; it is credibility.
Bosnia: Enforcement and civilian implementation must reinforce each other
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement created an Implementation Force (IFOR) — later succeeded by a Stabilization Force (SFOR) and both led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) — to implement the military aspects of the settlement. Over time, SFOR’s mission mandate expanded to collecting and destroying unregistered weapons in order to build confidence and ensure public safety. Dayton included a sub-regional arms-control track under Article IV, recognizing that stabilization required more than just silence on the battlefield. But Bosnia also illustrates a structural risk: Robust external enforcement can suppress violence without producing a locally legitimate, self-sustaining political authority — leaving a durable “peace” that is externally maintained and politically stagnant.
The applicability for Gaza is twofold. First, security enforcement and arms measures can work when embedded in a broader settlement architecture with clear authority, predictable rules, and a parallel civilian track. Second, the Bosnia example also warns against overreliance on external coercion when local legitimacy is weak. A pacified space can become a frozen, externally preserved political order that never achieves genuine, self-sustaining governance.
What “disarmament as a means” looks like in Gaza
In practical terms, drawing on what these past cases got right — and where they fell short — points to a few factors that should shape the approach going forward:
1. Immediate governance presence from day one
Disarmament becomes feasible when a credible, visible Palestinian authority is present on the ground and able to govern. “Technocratic” cannot mean remote. The interim authority — whether Palestinian Authority-led and reformed, or a time-bound technocratic body anchored in Palestinian legitimacy — must begin delivering services, basic administration, and public safety immediately.
This is how the contest with Hamas is actually won: not only by degrading the militant group’s capabilities, but by building a competing center of legitimacy that performs — fairly, visibly, and without humiliation.
2. Security transition, not just weapons collection
Armed individuals need pathways, not dead ends: vetted integration into reformed Palestinian security forces where appropriate, civilian employment, or demobilization with dignity. That requires employment programs explicitly targeting former combatants — reconstruction labor, civil defense, municipal services, and cash-for-work tied to public goods.
This addresses the central political economy problem: If weapons function as livelihood, disarmament that ignores livelihoods invites rearmament.
3. A visible horizon with reciprocal, irreversible steps
Disarmament is not credible unless civilians can see and experience tangible changes when violence recedes. The governing transition must therefore be tied to concrete, verifiable improvements that advance with a disarmament process — not after it.
That horizon should be expressed in practical terms: predictable freedom of movement; clear rules for commercial flows; credible steps toward port access and permitting for reconstruction; and the rollback of border crossing closures that signal indefinite containment. The logic shifts from “comply, then maybe you will get something” to “as weapons leave, normal life returns.”
4. Gradual, zone-by-zone sequencing with demonstration effects
Disarmament is not a single event; it is a multi-year process of social transformation. In Gaza, that means sequencing matters. The first objective should be harm reduction — reducing the day-to-day coercion people experience — before attempting to eliminate armed capability outright. Early steps can focus on stopping public displays of weapons, curbing intimidation and extortion, protecting civilians who cooperate, and restricting access to heavy weapons and explosives. Only once basic safety and livelihoods begin to stabilize does it become realistic to pursue capability reduction over time through registration, phased collection, storage and destruction, and structured pathways for fighters to exit armed roles. This can be paired with area-based handovers — neighborhood-by-neighborhood or district-by-district transitions — so that each zone that becomes safer and more governable produces a “demonstration effect,” providing visible proof that compliance brings security, services, and dignity, and that the rules are enforced predictably. This process could be broken down into the following three phases:
Phase 1 (weeks 0-8): Weapons restraint — no weapons in public life around aid distribution, hospitals, schools, and municipal facilities; bans on armed taxation/extortion and armed policing; and incident review processes to prevent rumor-driven escalation.
Phase 2 (months 2-8): Managed storage/cantonment — monitored storage to get weapons off the streets; verified bans on recruitment and armed enforcement; and the standing down of armed “security” roles replaced by vetted, lawful policing.
Phase 3 (months 6-24+): Decommissioning plus reintegration — decommissioning of heavy weapons and production capacity first, then neighborhood-by-neighborhood sequencing with decommissioning of smaller arms tied to governance capacity; individualized off-ramps into jobs, retraining, civic service, and, where appropriate, carefully vetted security roles under civilian authority.
Zone-by-zone sequencing matters because it turns abstract promises into visible proof. Areas that transition should see an immediate handover of governance and a start to reconstruction, creating internal pressure on holdouts and reducing the all-or-nothing logic that keeps weapons central.
5. Lawful Palestinian policing at the center — designed to survive legitimacy tests
Gazans will judge any interim order by whether it can stop predation and revenge violence, protect civilians from looting and coercive capture, deliver basic services without humiliation, and enforce rules fairly.
That requires a capable Palestinian police force* that is paid on time and has internal accountability and complaint channels, clear detention standards, investigative capacity, and a public-order doctrine calibrated to reduce lethality. The lesson of Iraq is stark: Dismantling security structures without a credible replacement creates a vacuum that armed entrepreneurs fill. Gaza cannot afford a “vacuum first” strategy.
6. A credible third-party architecture that protects reciprocity
Third-party monitoring is not a cosmetic add-on; it is the mechanism that makes a parallel implementation process credible. Palestinians must believe that disarming does not simply leave them defenseless in the face of renewed violence, and Israelis must believe that weapons governance is real and enforceable.
A hybrid model may be the most viable option: a United Nations-mandated mechanism with US and European technical support; Arab state funding and political backing; and an implementation architecture that includes protection against unilateral military re-entry in areas that have transitioned. This is the credibility problem in its most operational form: If one side is asked to take irreversible steps while the other retains open-ended discretion, civilians conclude the end-state is containment — and the corruption of powerlessness accelerates.
7. Political integration, not Gaza-as-an-enclave
Finally, disarmament in Gaza must be explicitly connected to Palestinian political reintegration: the reunification of Gaza and the West Bank under a single legitimate government, national reconciliation mechanisms, and a pathway to elections or representative renewal.
The point is not to grant impunity. It is to avoid creating a permanent excluded class with weapons and grievances. A credible political pathway makes armed resistance socially unnecessary for most people — and turns those who insist on it into political outliers rather than the center of gravity.
Addressing likely objections
A dual-track strategy, with governance-building and disarmament moving together, not in strict sequence, will invite pushback. Even so, international experience from post-conflict settings supports a set of pragmatic counterarguments.
“This rewards Hamas and terrorism.”
In fact, it does the opposite. A disarmament-as-means strategy erodes Hamas’s social base by building alternative poles of authority and legitimacy while offering individual fighters dignified exit ramps. The current approach often does the reverse: It preserves armed networks by making governance and recovery impossible without them.
“Israel will never accept this.”
Israeli security is not served by a strategy that produces repeated military operations, international isolation, and a permanently hostile population. But Israeli politics is more complicated. The current ruling coalition benefits from managed incitement and Palestinian radicalism — each cycle of violence validates annexationist agendas, marginalizes two-state proponents, and keeps the pro-settlement bloc in power. For these actors, Gazan chaos is not a problem to solve but a resource to manage.
“For Israel’s political system — leaders, elites, and voters — this creates a genuine dilemma.”
The strategy proposed here requires Israeli leaders to bet on Palestinian partnership and institutional coherence at a moment when their political survival depends on denying the possibility of both. The compact cannot succeed without Israeli buy-in, but that in turn will require a shift in how Israeli voters and elites perceive Palestinian capacity for self-governance.
The responsibility for that perception shift is threefold given current power dynamics. Palestinians must do their own heavy lifting, international actors must enable and demand, and Israeli leadership must, at a minimum, get out of the way and not undermine the possibility that a capable Palestinian partner with credibility and legitimacy on the ground will emerge. The phased approach outlined here is designed to generate visible, verifiable evidence of Palestinian institutional performance: police that show up and do not steal, courts that resolve disputes, and municipalities that clear rubble and restore power. These are not “confidence-building measures” in the Oslo sense, which demanded Palestinian concessions for Israeli promises. They are reality-building measures — manifestations of governing capacity that build legitimacy with their own people and demonstrate capable partnership to skeptical international and Israeli audiences. The wager is that legitimacy in Gaza can reshape the political calculus in Israel. This is not because Israeli leaders suddenly become magnanimous but because the Israeli public — faced with a credible alternative to permanent war — may begin to ask harder questions about who benefits from endless conflict.
“The Palestinian Authority is too weak and corrupt.”
That sentiment is precisely true — but that is why legitimacy benchmarks and anti-corruption controls must be built in from day one, with strict procurement safeguards and public complaint mechanisms. The goal is not to import dysfunction; it is to establish a governed transition with enforceable accountability.
“What if Hamas rejects the framework?”
The architecture should be designed for partial compliance and internal splintering. Benefits should flow to compliant areas while holdouts face isolation. Over time, this will create internal pressure on hardliners by shifting civilians’ interests away from armed governance.
A compact that is both strategic and achievable
The most credible way to operationalize this approach is a Stabilization-to-Sovereignty Compact with three parallel tracks, shared milestones, and public reporting (with designated frequency):
Track 1 — Improvement of daily life and civilian protection (weekly): This track focuses on humanitarian and psychosocial imperatives to include shelter coverage, water/sanitation functionality, primary healthcare access, market liquidity, cash-for-work enrollment, predictable entry of essential goods, and psychosocial surge capacity. Generating access to education is a key imperative in this regard, albeit a massive lift given the scale of educational infrastructure destruction. Creative solutions for getting more than 600,000 school-aged children back into a more structured educational routine should be prioritized and enabled.
Track 2 — Building governance legitimacy (monthly): This process homes in on the need for procurement transparency, anti-corruption controls, complaint-resolution mechanisms, equitable municipal service delivery, and dispute-resolution mechanisms (e.g., for property claims, restitution, and detainee-related grievances).
Track 3 — Security transition and weapons governance (quarterly): This is where the work on disarmament proceeds, establishing a vetted policing footprint and metrics for measuring performance (including predation reduction), a phased weapons reduction process (from restraint to storage to decommissioning), and independent verification reports with clear consequences for non-compliance.
Success will not be measured solely by weapons removed, but by fear and predation reduced and dignity expanded because those are the conditions under which weapons become socially unnecessary.
Bottom line
A disarmament-first posture will set Gaza up for failure. It is likely to deepen humiliation, expand survival economies, and preserve the social demand for coercive protection.
A disarmament-in-parallel posture will be more effective in achieving longer-term goals for Gaza, including a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, the recognized aspiration of the Palestinian people as articulated in President Trump’s 20-point plan and the New York Declaration, and enshrined in UN Security Council Resolution 2803. The lessons of the comparative record — from Iraq’s cautionary exclusions and security vacuums to Northern Ireland’s verified, settlement-embedded decommissioning and Bosnia’s enforced security framework plus arms control — point in the same direction: Disarmament sticks when legitimacy grows, not when powerlessness deepens.
The question is not whether disarmament matters. It is whether the goal is disarmament for short-term optics or for longer-term impact. The former may be achieved through tough talk, coercion, and neglect of humanitarian and early recovery imperatives. It will inevitably produce superficial adherence and rearmament. The latter is achieved through the more methodical and effective work of a multi-track governing transition process that reveals a pathway to a better future for Gaza and Gazans by building legitimate governance, rule of law, and the dignity of improved lives, livelihoods, and a political future.