Hamas disarmament roadmap is an opening, and there is only one way to not lose it - opinion

The central implementation challenge is now whether Israel will also accept the Roadmap and whether both sides will carry out their respective commitments. Its success will depend on turning those commitments into reciprocal and verifiable action rather than allowing disagreements over sequencing to become a source of paralysis.

The first mistake would be to treat disarmament as a ceremony with a deadline. In every serious transition, disarmament has been a political and security process, not simply an exercise in collecting weapons.

Northern Ireland’s decommissioning took years and succeeded because an independent international commission created a trusted, face-saving mechanism through which weapons could be placed beyond use. In Colombia, phased weapons handover was paired with United Nations verification, transitional arrangements and reintegration into civilian and political life. In Kosovo, the withdrawal of Yugoslav forces and the demilitarisation of the Kosovo Liberation Army were synchronized under a third-party security presence.

The lesson is not that Gaza should copy these cases. It is that irreversible steps require reciprocal movement, credible guarantees and trusted verification.

Benchmarks must therefore matter more than dates. A serious verification mechanism should define compliance, establish chain-of-custody procedures for weapons, and monitor tunnels, production capacity, illicit financing and arms flows. It also needs rapid channels for investigating incidents, resolving disputes and responding to persistent violations.

The second mistake would be to demand disarmament without offering a viable exit from armed life. Hamas commanders and those responsible for grave crimes must face justice. But rank-and-file members prepared to renounce violence, coerced personnel and civil servants require differentiated and carefully vetted pathways.

Safe surrender, screening, rehabilitation, education, livelihoods and individual reintegration are not rewards for militancy. They are tools for preventing remobilization. Disarmament is substitution as much as subtraction: lawful institutions must replace the income, status, services and protection that armed networks provided. Any integration must be individual, accountable and subordinate to unified civilian command, not a rebranding of armed structures that preserves their autonomy.

Third, the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza and the International Stabilization Force must be enabled to begin work quickly. Their legitimacy will not come from their names, sponsors or mandates alone. It must be earned through performance.

Gazans need safer streets, functioning water and electricity, reopened schools and health services, rubble removed, homes repaired and jobs created. Israelis need the same architecture to provide credible, independently verified protection against rearmament and renewed attack. Civilian recovery and Israeli security are not competing tracks. Each is necessary to make the other sustainable.

The ISF should be politically led and supported by robust civilian, policing and military capacities. It needs a precise mandate, clear limits and the ability to protect civilians, facilitate humanitarian access and oversee agreed security arrangements.

The mission must also be temporary, conditions-based and designed from the outset for the earliest responsible handover to legitimate Palestinian institutions. It should be only as international as necessary and as Palestinian as possible. A force perceived as a new occupation will fail, however well equipped it may be.

Fourth, regional engagement must move from endorsement to machinery. The United States and the mediators should remain active guarantors. Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the European Union and other partners should be incorporated into a structured framework for financing, border arrangements, deconfliction, monitoring and political support.

Finally, Gaza cannot be stabilized as an island. A process that rebuilds Gaza while the West Bank is economically strangled, fragmented by settlement expansion and exposed to escalating settler violence will lose Palestinian legitimacy and eventually undermine Israeli security.

Withheld Palestinian revenues must be released, correspondent banking services protected, and the Palestinian Authority supported as it advances reform, renews its leadership and restores its ability to govern.

This is not an argument for postponing security until every political question has been resolved. It is an argument for making security durable by giving every party a stake in the order that replaces war.

Israelis need proof that Hamas’s military capacity is being dismantled and cannot regenerate. Palestinians need proof that disarmament will not produce permanent occupation, or political erasure. Gazans need to experience recovery as a daily reality, not a distant promise. Israelis need to experience safety without the threat of Hamas regrouping.

The Roadmap can still fail. Spoilers will test it, electoral politics will narrow room for maneuver, and every delay will deepen suspicion. But failure is not preordained.

This opportunity should not be romanticized. It should be operationalized, and it must not be missed.

More than 550 Israeli and Palestinian leaders in our Uniting for a Shared Future coalition have spent the past two years working across profound mistrust and hardened public opinion to identify workable steps towards a new era of stability and security. We have consistently called for the disarmament of Hamas and other non-state armed groups and a credible political horizon connecting Gaza and the West Bank. These are not concessions one people makes to the other. They are in the fundamental self-interest of both Israelis and Palestinians, because neither can secure its future through the continued insecurity of the other.