A US-brokered Gaza ceasefire and disarmament agreement, hailed by former President Donald Trump just one week ago as a landmark diplomatic breakthrough, is now on the brink of collapse after the US-led Gaza Board of Peace reversed its core commitment to link parallel Israeli troop withdrawal and Hamas disarmament to align with Israeli demands.
The original roadmap, finalized last week following months of negotiations that built on an initial October 2025 ceasefire, established a clear sequence: Hamas would begin decommissioning its weapons, arms infrastructure and tunnel network at the same time that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) halted offensive operations and pulled its troops back to the pre-agreed “yellow line” ceasefire boundary. Trump publicly backed this framework, confirming that Israeli withdrawal would proceed step-by-step alongside disarmament.
But even before the reversal, Israel had violated the initial ceasefire terms over the 10-month period since the first truce took effect. Israeli forces have steadily advanced deeper into Gaza beyond the agreed ceasefire line, and now control between 60% and 70% of the enclave. More than 2 million Palestinian residents are confined to a shrinking portion of territory that has been reduced to widespread rubble by two years of sustained Israeli military operations.
While Trump claimed Israeli leaders were “very happy” with the new roadmap, Israeli officials immediately rejected the parallel withdrawal-disarmament framework, insisting they would only pull troops after Hamas had completed full disarmament. Hamas, in turn, has repeatedly stated it will only move forward with disarmament if Israel honors its commitment to withdraw troops in tandem. On Sunday, Israel launched new airstrikes and ground operations across Gaza that killed at least 18 Palestinians, marking the highest single-day death toll in weeks. Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet, publicly confirmed there was no binding agreement to halt attacks on the enclave.
Netanyahu’s pressure campaign ultimately succeeded. After a meeting between Netanyahu and Gaza Board of Peace envoy Nickolay Mladenov on Monday, the mediation body issued a social media statement that rewrote the core terms of the agreement to match Israel’s position, falsely claiming the new wording had been part of the original deal. “Contrary to inaccurate reports, we note that the withdrawal of the IDF beyond the Yellow Line will take place only once decommissioning is complete, as Hamas committed to the mediators,” the statement read. “This applies to light weapons, heavy weapons, and the tunnels alike.”
This revised statement directly contradicts Mladenov’s own public comment just four days earlier, when he explicitly confirmed “withdrawal must move in lockstep with decommissioning.” The reversal also ignores a key detail of the original agreement: the roadmap distinguished between heavy weapons, production infrastructure and tunnels, which would be decommissioned, and light personal weapons, which Palestinian factions would be allowed to retain for internal security.
Hamas has pushed back against the reversal, reaffirming its commitment to the original second-phase ceasefire terms that all parties agreed to, and calling on Mladenov to issue an official clarification of the original agreement. Analysts based in the region and across the international Middle East policy community have condemned the mediation body’s reversal as a blatant betrayal of the negotiated deal that throws the entire ceasefire process into crisis.
Muhammad Shehada, a Gaza-based political analyst with the European Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on social media that the Gaza Board of Peace was “betraying the very agreement they just made” and “taking Netanyahu’s side fully.” Shehada noted that the inclusion of light weapons in the new full disarmament demand is a deliberate addition by Netanyahu to sabotage the entire agreement, which never required Palestinian factions to surrender all personal weapons.
Tariq Kenney-Shawa, associate director of editorial at the Institute for Middle East Understanding, said the abrupt reversal should not come as a surprise, arguing the mediation body exists primarily to advance Israeli interests. “The Board of Peace is just the administrative and fundraising arm of Israel’s occupation of Gaza,” he said. “It exists to facilitate Gaza’s ethnic cleansing and concentration camps in a way that is palatable and profitable for the international community.”
Since the initial October 2025 ceasefire took effect after two years of full-scale war, more than 1,200 additional Palestinians have been killed by Israeli attacks, bringing the official confirmed death toll from the conflict to more than 73,000. Independent experts have repeatedly warned the actual death toll is far higher, as thousands of bodies remain trapped under rubble of destroyed buildings. July 2026 was the deadliest month for Palestinians this year, with more than 150 killed, and senior Israeli leaders have publicly discussed plans to fully conquer the entire Gaza Strip, maintain permanent Israeli control, and resettle Israeli civilians in illegal settlements across the enclave.