A lasting ceasefire in Gaza cannot be achieved unless Hamas disarms before any agreement is reached

What's this about?

People disagree about whether Hamas must give up its weapons before any ceasefire deal can start.

The key question asks what must happen first, and what must happen later.

What supporters say

• A lasting ceasefire needs Hamas, or another armed group, to lose its power to plan new attacks.
• Past ceasefires sometimes failed because leaders left major safety and power issues unsolved.

What critics say

• The claim sets a strict order that past ceasefire deals do not support.
• Hamas may refuse to give up its weapons before talks, making that first step hard to reach.

How to read this

The number of points on each side does not show who is right; strong proof matters more than point count.

The bottom line

The evidence does not show that Hamas must fully disarm before talks or a first ceasefire deal.

But a lasting peace likely needs a trusted plan to end Hamas’s armed role, with checks and real action.

The claim says Hamas must disarm before any ceasefire agreement can be reached if the truce is to last. The evidence supports a narrower conclusion: Hamas’s eventual loss of an independent military role may be essential to a durable settlement, but it has not been shown that disarmament must be completed before negotiations or an initial agreement begins.

The case for

A lasting ceasefire needs more than a pause in fighting. Hamas, or any successor armed group, must eventually lose the independent ability to organize new attacks through disarmament or equally effective controls on weapons. Without that, a ceasefire could simply suspend violence while leaving the means for renewed attacks in place. 1

Research on disarmament and reintegration treats weapons control as a central political and security issue, not a technical detail. It also shows that such efforts require functioning governance, incentives, monitoring and an acceptable security arrangement. Hamas has publicly resisted giving up control of Gaza’s security apparatus, suggesting that any settlement without an enforceable plan to transfer or neutralize that capacity could be difficult to carry out.

Previous ceasefires also show the danger of leaving core security questions unresolved. A truce may hold temporarily while the underlying military and political conflict remains unchanged. For a settlement to be durable, it would need a credible and verifiable path toward ending Hamas’s independent military role, backed by enforcement and oversight. 2

That does not necessarily mean the process must begin with completed disarmament. But it does mean that a ceasefire agreement built only on promises, without practical weapons controls and enforcement, would face serious risks.

The case against

The strongest objection is that the claim turns an important condition for lasting peace into an absolute rule about timing. Existing ceasefire frameworks do not support the idea that no agreement can come before disarmament. UN Security Council Resolution 2735 called for an immediate ceasefire while linking it to later negotiations over a permanent end to hostilities. The January 2025 framework also used phased implementation without requiring Hamas to have fully disarmed before the agreement took effect. 3

Those arrangements do not prove that either framework would produce lasting peace. They do, however, directly challenge the universal claim that disarmament must come first in every case.

Comparative research on disarmament, demobilization and reintegration also suggests that immediate, one-sided surrender is often politically unrealistic. Armed groups may give up weapons only after receiving credible security guarantees, political concessions, governance arrangements, monitoring and a path for reintegration. Demanding disarmament before those conditions exist could remove the leverage needed to secure a ceasefire, making the precondition counterproductive. 4

The wider peacebuilding evidence points to a package of measures: a political settlement, monitoring, governance, inclusion, enforcement and weapons management. Even completed disarmament would not by itself guarantee lasting peace if political goals, trust, enforcement or implementation arrangements remained unresolved.

The bottom line

The evidence does not support the claim as stated. It moderately favours rejecting the categorical requirement that Hamas must fully disarm before any agreement can be reached. The evidence against that sequencing rule is stronger than the evidence showing that pre-agreement disarmament is specifically necessary.

At the same time, this is not an argument that disarmament can be ignored. Hamas’s eventual loss of an independent military capacity is plausibly a central part of any durable settlement. The more defensible approach is a monitored and enforceable sequence linking an initial cessation of fighting with governance, security guarantees, weapons control and reintegration.

The main uncertainty is whether the parties could make such a staged arrangement work in Gaza. The available evidence includes formal agreements, comparative research and policy analysis, but there is no Gaza-specific long-term test showing which sequence would reliably produce lasting peace.