Israeli Press
Maariv details how Hamas would hand Gaza's weapons to Palestinian custody
Graphic: Times of Palestine
Original Reporting
The fullest account yet published in Israel of the Gaza roadmap's machinery ran Friday in the Israeli daily Maariv, where the Arab affairs commentator Jacky Hugi reported the handover plan Hamas has accepted — and argued Israel is wrong to sweep it off the table.
The turn came with Khalil al-Hayya's arrival atop Hamas's political bureau, in Hugi's account. Within days his men told mediators the movement would surrender the military wing's weapons, tunnel maps and rocket workshops — to Palestinian hands, zone by zone, each handover matched by an Israeli withdrawal on a preset timetable.
The receiving structure is taking shape, Hugi reported. Morocco and Uganda have agreed to send hundreds of soldiers toward a five-thousand-strong international force already housing at a camp near Kerem Shalom; a new Palestinian police, its first 200 officers chosen and its budget Emirati — a task handled by Mohammed Dahlan — would replace Hamas's force.
Above both would sit a fifteen-minister technocratic government headed by the engineer Ali Shaath, waiting in Cairo for Israel's permission to enter. Tony Blair, Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff and Aryeh Lightstone shaped the plan; Turkey, Qatar and Egypt mediate, with the Emirates informally alongside.
Netanyahu rejected the roadmap within three days of hearing it, Hugi noted — even as the army quietly lowered its fire from Monday.
Hamas agreeing to deposit its weapons in other hands is an achievement worth noting, Hugi concluded, and Israel's dismissal of it the war continued by other means.
