Israel’s response so far to the disarmament declaration has been lukewarm at best, writes defence analyst Lt Col Stuart Crawford
The so-called “Board of Peace”, founded and led by United States President Donald Trump in an attempt to bring an end to the ongoing conflict between Israel, Hamas, and various other Iranian proxy terrorist groups and militias, has announced it has reached an agreement for the “complete disarmament” of armed groups in Gaza.
Forgive me if I pause to take a pinch of salt from the salt cellar on my kitchen work surface.
Well, firstly, Hamas is the death cult which launched the October 7 assault on Israel which resulted in the murder of 1,200 Israeli citizens and the abduction of some 251 more to be held as hostages.
The horror involved in the killings has been well documented and needs no repeating here, as does the treatment and eventual return of the hostages to Israel.
Hamas showed itself to be an evil and heartless organisation.
It reinforced its image by its treatment of its own Gazan Palestinian citizenry during the following war with Israel, stealing and diverting international aid for its own ends, and dealing summarily and cruelly with its own people at any sign of dissent.
It did not have the people of Gaza’s interests at heart, only its own twisted ideology.
The only reason Hamas is playing along with Mr Trump’s embryo disarmament plans is it is losing and losing badly.
Since the cessation of outright and overt military operations against the Gaza Strip, Israel, in the form of the Mossad, Shin Bet, and the mysterious "NILI", a secretive unit of security and intelligence agents, has been slowly and methodically hunting down those Hamas members who participated in the October 7 attacks and eliminating them one by one.
As the Israeli assassinations steadily increase, Hamas is frightened its fighters and organisation will be eradicated entirely.
They will say anything to stop the process, but I doubt very much that they will be true to their word on disarmament.
At the same time, can anyone believe Mr Trump will be true to his word also? His opinions and policy outbursts change with the wind and are completely unreliable.
Just look at how many times he has declared progress towards peace in his Iranian peace talks only for him to authorise military strikes 24 hours later.
You cannot trust a word that the man says, nor can you trust his immediate acolytes JD Vance and Pete Hegseth.
They will all say anything to get their own way in an aggressive campaign of self-aggrandisement and narcissism.
Little wonder, therefore, Israel’s response so far to the disarmament declaration has been lukewarm at best.
Not only are they distrustful of Hamas and the US administration, but they have also heard it all before and are understandably nonplussed. On top of this, they still have several Hamas operatives they are determined to hunt down and they will not stop until the job is finished.
The background to all of this is, of course, Mr Trump needs something positive to report to his domestic American audience before the November mid-term elections. His military adventure against Iran has gone badly wrong and he is unable to end it short of committing massive US military resources to the task, in direct contradiction of his pre-election “no more foreign wars” pledge.
And if it does not spread to involve the Gulf states directly then he can only hope for a spontaneous uprising of the Iranian population to unseat the medieval theocracy that governs them.
That, without being cynical in this case, still looks a long way off.
