It Could Happen Here - Disarming Hamas

Episode Date: August 31, 2026

In this episode Dana El Kurd talks about recent news of Hamas dissolving its emergency committee in Gaza and agreeing to disarmament – sort of.   Sources: https://carnegieendowment.org/events/2026/04/what-path-forward-the-board-of-peace-gaza-and-the-future-of-multilateralism https://www.refugeesinternational.org/perspectives-and-commentaries/six-months-into-gaza-ceasefire-setting-the-record-straight-about-aid/ https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/gaza-deal-hamas-israel-lebanon-explosions-morocco-spain-migrantsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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you get your podcasts. Hello, everyone, and welcome to It Could Happen here. My name is Dan Al-Kurd, and I'm a researcher and analyst of Arab and Palestinian politics. Today, I want to talk about the recent announcement that Hamas agreed to a second phase of the Gaza ceasefire. So the Board of Peace and mediator countries announced July 30th, last Thursday I'm recording on August 4th, that Hamas had agreed to a sort of roadmap in which they would roll. relinquish some of their weapons. So this whole scenario has hinged on Hamas disarming, even though in other conflicts when there have been two parties, disarmament comes at later stages. But in this

scenario, the Board of Peace and the Director General Nikolai Mladenov has basically hinged the entire process on Hamas disarming first. And so in the recent announcement, which President Donald Trump basically celebrated on his social media, calling it a historic agreement for the complete disarmament of Hamas. Hamas basically said that they had been in conversation with not only the mediators in their proposals, but with other Palestinian factions and had agreed to relinquish their weapons in a particular way. So they said it was contingent and conditional on a permanent end to Israeli attacks and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, as well as recovery and reconstruction. And importantly, they basically said that no weapons would be handed over to Israel or to any non-Palestinian party.

So what Hamas is saying is we're going to give up our weapons eventually if Israel also adheres to the guidelines of the ceasefire. And we will relinquish our weapons to the National Committee, which is a governance structure made up of Palestinian technocrats. So since the National Committee is supposed to govern Gaza eventually, or at least that's the intention of this committee, even though they haven't actually been allowed to do that, the idea here is Hamas is saying, you want to claim that disarmament is the reason that the ceasefire and recovery and reconstruction can't proceed. Okay, so we'll disarm, but we'll only disarm to other Palestinians. And like I said, it's contingent on Israel also agreeing, withdrawing from. Gaza ceasing the continued attacks. Israeli officials have basically said that they have severe worries about it and they're not interested. The national security minister, Ithamar bin Gavir, basically said that it's not acceptable to Israel. So, you know, it's very much up in the air, but Hamas basically threw the ball in Israel's court with this announcement. It's also important to point out that throughout these past couple of months since the ceasefire was announced,

over a thousand Palestinians have been killed in the week that this announcement was made, Israel killed at least six in Gaza and wounded many others. And so all of that is going on, and that's not even mentioning what's happening in the West Bank, where things have really escalated in terms of both Israeli army and Israeli settler violence, which often, of course, goes hand in hand. this announcement might really amount to nothing here, especially if Israel doesn't comply, but I think it poses a bigger question around the Board of Peace and its design and its objectives. So that's basically what this episode is going to be about, answering the question of whether the board's design, who sits on it, who pays for seat, who answers to who, actually makes a fair outcome for Palestinians structurally impossible, regardless of this announcement or any other announcements.

or decisions that Palestinians may make. So just as a reminder to listeners, the Board of Peace was announced as part of President Trump's 20-point Gaza plan back in September 2025, 20 points to get Gaza back on track. I shouldn't make jokes here, but that's what it was called,

and it was launched in January 26. Its stated purpose is to promote stability, restore dependable and lawful governance, and secure enduring peace in conflict-affected areas. So not only in Gaza. At the start, the Board of Peace was announced around what was happening in Gaza, but eventually it grew into a bigger idea. And Gaza was framed as a template. So this board of peace is supposed to be a model for managing future conflicts globally. But as I've argued

in the past, this really is not about conflict resolution. It's about conflict management and a very particular type of conflict management where you subdue conflict through repressive means, rather than reconciliation or recovery or reparations or anything kind of long term. So I think it's important to maybe discuss at this point how the Board of Peace is structured. It's basically a three-tier hierarchy with Gaza at the bottom. At the top, there's the founding executive board. This is chaired by President Trump. In fact, in the founding documents of the Board of Peace, he is named explicitly.

It's not that the president of the United States will continue to chair the Board of Peace. No, it's specifically Donald Trump. So apparently he's going to be president for life here. That's the top decision-making body. And then underneath that is the Gaza Executive Board. It includes a lot of different interesting characters. I'll talk about them in a second. The Gaza Executive Board oversees implementation of what happens in Gaza.

farther, farther, farther underneath that is the National Community for the Administration of Gaza, who are 15 unelected Palestinian technocrats approved by Palestinian factions, but they are not of any particular party. They are civil servants, and they're supposed to actually administer Gaza day to day. Now, the National Committee reports to the Director General of the Gaza Executive Board, who is Nikolay Miladanov, not to any Palestinian constituency or to the Palestinian Authority, for example. example or any Palestinian body. Now, the six-page charter of the Board of Peace never actually mentions Gaza or human rights. And I don't think this is an oversight.

You know, the board is designed as a template for managing future conflicts. It's not designed to uphold human rights. And I think even though, of course, these are problematic positions to take, I think the European reaction serves as a sort of legitimacy check here. when the Board of Peace and its mechanisms were supposed to be applied to Gaza, the EU attended the board's first meeting as an observer, for example, and a number of countries kind of floated the idea of joining. But then when the Board of Peace was expanded as an idea to become a template for future conflicts,

for example, Ukraine, then, you know, the European Union and other European actors basically cited serious doubts about compatibility with. the UN Charter. And then France and the UK voiced reservations when Putin, for example, was invited to be on the board. So yeah, who is on the top tier board here? It's got people like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who holds a seat on the Board of Peace, despite being a party to a conflict that's literally ongoing and is the reason why the Board of Peace supposedly came into existence. And despite having an ICC arrest warrant for war crimes. So clearly, you know, one party to the conflict in this scenario in the Gaza case is elevated while the other is administered.

Then there are a bunch of business figures. So CEOs, venture capitalists, they sit alongside heads of state. So reconstruction is really framed as a business opportunity as much as it's framed as an issue of governance. There's not a single Palestinian, nor does the PA actually hold a seat anywhere in this hierarchy. Even though the Palestinian Authority did actually want to join the Board of Peace and it sought full membership on it, all they got was basically a consolation prize, which was this coordination committee between the Palestinian Authority and the board with the Palestinian Authority Prime Minister, Muhammad Mustafa, basically representing the Palestinian authority one-on-one to Militanov, which, you know, has been described as a type of compromise

because the PA doesn't actually have a seat by itself. There was much made about a $1 billion price tag for a permanent seat on the board. So people like Viktor Orban and Vladimir Putin and Lukashenko basically were invited to participate in this way. And it's kind of obviously a sham turning participation in, you know, quote-unquote peace governance into a commodity for heads of state. Now, Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, who is inexplicably also involved in this, at Davos in January basically presented a master plan

that projected $10 billion for Gaza's GDP by 2035. And he talked about new towers and industrial parks and all of this, of course, drawn up without consulting Palestinians living in Gaza. And Trump himself has described Gaza as a, quote, beautiful piece of property over and over. So to me, this is a shorthand for how the plan frames the conflict or wants to,

wants to convince people that this conflict this fundamentally about underdevelopment. Palestinians have grievances because they're poor rather than the occupation, rather than the genocide. So, you know, poses a question, what does it mean for this peace architecture when the same people who oversee reconstruction also profit from it? Get Bell, purefiber internet with craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell. Connection is everything. I'm Mungeshitikyther and I'm back with a new season of the podcast Skyline Drive.

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So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Now, who is on the Gaza Executive Board, that second tier? You can find the full roster online. It is important to note that they actually haven't met ever as a board. You know, some of these people have their names and their pictures on the website, and this Gaza Executive Board has really not functioned

except as kind of a legitimacy stamp on the Board of Pieces activities. But it really is very indicative of what the Board of Peace is supposed to be and how they want to deal with Gaza here. when you look at who has been invited, even if they've never met. So it's got Gulf diplomats, Turkish diplomats. It has an Egyptian intelligence chief. It has a bunch of Trump administration people, Kushner, Susan Wiles, Steve Whitkoff. And then finance and business interests, like I said, are very heavily represented here.

So you have the CEO of Apollo, Mark Rowan. You have venture capitalist Michael Eisenberg and a number of other businessmen, many of them with ties to Israel. There's only really two, let's say, peace process veterans on this board. There's the Director General, Ladenev, who I've discussed in a previous episode, who's very problematic. I'll talk about him in just a second. And then Tony Blair, Tony Blair, also extremely problematic. He has a history of basically delivering the Good Friday Agreement in the Northern Ireland conflict, but it doesn't seem to be applying any of the lessons of those previous conflicts

to the Middle East in any way. But the point here is that security, finance, and U.S. political operatives clearly outweigh conflict resolution expertise on this executive board. So who's actually running this? Like I said, they've never actually met. Maybe some of them have been promised a bigger role in the future. I'm thinking particularly the business people here. But let's linger on Nikolai.

I don't know how to pronounce his name, Ladinov, who is the Director General here. I've talked about him before in a previous episode, but he's the former Bulgarian foreign minister under a government that was toppled by anti-corruption protests. Since 2022, he was the head of an Emirati diplomatic academy which championed the Abraham Accords, the so-called peace agreements between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain and a few others. And this is a framework that was disastrous.

It's seen especially by Palestinians as essentially cementing their exclusion from statehood. So this is the guy who's supposed to run the Gaza executive board and who has turned the peace process on its head by basically, again, like I said at the beginning of the episode, conditioning the entire process on disarmament first. We have the rest of the Gaza Executive Board, and then we have the Center for Civilian Military Control. So this is a center. It's based in the South of Israel.

It's supposed to oversee the ceasefire. But every ceasefire enforcement decision basically has no... sway on Israel itself. Like there's no mechanism to actually hold Israel accountable. It has no independent authority. It coordinates with the White House. And in particular, the liaison to the White House is this man, Aria Lightstone, who was a senior advisor to a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, who was extremely right wing. And there's been recent reporting, which I'll link in the show notes, about how intensely hostile he is to Palestinians. So this is the guy who's supposed to oversee the ceasefire and report to the White House.

So what are the consequences on the ground? As I said, more than a thousand Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the ceasefire was announced. Over half of Gaza is now behind this quote-unquote yellow line, which is Israeli-controlled territory. Humanitarian and agricultural access is restricted or prohibited in that area. So Gaza is more and more squeezed. The aid that was supposed to reach 600 trucks a day has never reached that promised 600 trucks. And much of what enters is basically private sector goods that's sold for profit. with the Israelis also getting like a coordination fee on each truck.

Now, Hamas dissolved its emergency committee in July 26 before they announced that they had accepted the mediator's proposals about disarmament. They dissolved this emergency committee and said they were handing authority over to the national committee. But the board basically was uninterested in this move. They said that they were guided by actions, not promises. And it really points to the fact that these kind of procedural concessions that Hamas is attempting to make don't really fix the structural design flaws. I think it's also important to point out here that even though on paper, Hamas has given up its civilian government, on the ground

that doesn't actually change much. It's still involved in security and policing and bureaucracy. And what they dissolved is this civilian cabinet body that had run Gaza since October 2023. And it's a very specific administrative organ and it's not all of Hamas's governing capacity. So it was kind of, again, a way of like throwing the ball in Israel's court and claiming that we are dissolving the committee, we are making these concessions, but they're being very, you know, strategic about this. And in the same announcement, when they dissolved the emergency committee, they basically said that their technical and professional staff would remain in their posts. And it hasn't, you know, relinquished control over the civil service and security bureaucracy. So a few months ago, much was made about Hamas's strategy and whether there were going to be shipped. in that strategy because there was an internal election in Hamas that basically cemented the divide

between a kind of more hardline camp and a more pragmatist camp. And the more hardline camp won. So between Khaled Mishal, who was supposedly, you know, more pragmatist and arguing for political accommodation, and Khalil Al-Haya, who demanded kind of more confrontation, the second guy won. And so there was a lot of speculation back in February that that meant if the hardliners won that this is going to impact disarmament. And that means Hamas will never disarm and would never actually acquiesce to what was being demanded of them. But in the last couple of weeks, months, you can see that Hamas' strategy is much more, let's

say, nuanced and attempting to kind of buy, time with the United States and with the international community while still saying, okay, we're going to make concessions. This is not to imply that the victory of the kind of more hardline camp isn't going to impact how best strategy in the future. They are much more Gaza rooted and a more pro-Iran faction. You know, obviously these are internal shifts between them, but we'll see how that plays out in the near future. But again, I think we go back to the idea of how the, the Board of Peace is designed, and whether the flaws in its design and the dangerous precedent it sets for not only, quote unquote, you know, conflict resolution in Gaza, but conflict resolution

in every other arena of conflict here, where in this scenario, there isn't neutral mediation, there isn't buy-in from all parties, one side is completely missing from the board, one side is administered. It really poses the question of whether any kind of political movement, any concessions, anything that can be mediated and agreed upon, actually impacts how the board is going to function. How much Hada, who was speaking at a Carnegie Endowment Roundtable back in April, he is a Gaza journalist, I think put it really well when he said that, quote, Gaza is no longer just a unique, extraordinary case of human savagery. It is a canary in a coal mine. What starts there does not end there. And I think I want to end on that note of framing Gaza as a canary in the coal mine.

Because the Board of Peace is this model that combines billionaires, profiteering, and kind of the worst actors in the world in terms of dictators and those who are invested in a more authoritarian world, that is going to be the model that's going to be exported to other weak states. or contested territories. That's all for me today. Hope that this was at least eye-opening. And thanks for listening. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media.

For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin Unfair.

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The matches that matter, the drama that doesn't, and the stories everyone's talking about. No cliches, no sugar-coding, just host analysts from someone who's actually been there. Coco looking real good. Her serve looks so much smoother than it has in the past. I was really happy to see Eager back to what she looked like a couple of years ago when she was winning dominantly. Listen to the Renee Stubbs tennis podcast on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I am talking to a felon right now with face tattoos, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. That was a caller from my podcast, Therapy Gecko, where I speak with anonymous callers about their problems, relationships, and anything else in the depths of their mind.

It all happens on my show, Therapy Gecko. So if you're trying to get out of your own head and into someone else's, this is the podcast. for you. Listen to Therapy Gecko on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dr. James Stout. You might know me as a host of the podcast it could happen here. But I'm hosting a brand new show now called Natural Causes, where we explain how going outside is political, and look at how we can live together with nature and take care of one another in a world that's on fire. You know, we feel uncomfortable saying something like culture in wildlife, but that's what it is. We're going to explain how a tick can make you see.

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