New Gaza Ceasefire Proposal Contains “Red Lines” for Hamas on Continued Israeli Occupation and Disarmament

Drop Site obtained the draft of a deal currently being pushed by the U.S., Egypt, and Qatar. Hamas insists it will not capitulate to Netanyahu’s new demands.

Members of Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, secure the area surrounding the handover of Israeli captives in Khan Younis, Gaza on February 20, 2025. Photo by Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images.

A delegation from Hamas is in Cairo this week for discussions with international mediators aimed at reviving the Gaza ceasefire deal, which Israel unilaterally destroyed last month by resuming its scorched earth bombing of the enclave. According to an internal draft circulated by Egyptian mediators and obtained by Drop Site, Hamas is being presented with a short-term proposal spanning 45 days aimed at forging a path to talks on a permanent ceasefire. It appears to scrap crucial elements of the framework from the original 3-phase deal signed by Hamas and Israel in January, which would have brought a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the declaration of a “permanent ceasefire.” The new draft proposal includes significant changes that Hamas is unlikely to accept, including the disarmament of Gaza.

According to the draft proposal, upon signing the agreement, Israel would cease its military attacks and overflights and Hamas would immediately release dual U.S.-Israeli citizen Edan Alexander “as a special gesture to the United States.” Alexander, a 21-year old New Jersey native, enlisted in the Golani Brigade of the Israeli army in 2022, after finishing high school. He was taken captive by Palestinian fighters who breached the “White House Outpost,” the Israeli military base near Kibbutz Nirim where Alexander was stationed, on October 7, 2023. On the second day of the agreement, Hamas would release five living Israeli captives in exchange for 66 Palestinians serving life sentences and an additional 611 who were taken by Israel in Gaza during the past 18 months. “These prisoners will be released simultaneously according to an agreed-upon mechanism, without any public parades or ceremonies,” according to the draft.

After that initial exchange, the Israeli army would begin pulling back its forces from Rafah and northern Gaza. Under the original deal, Israel was to begin a full withdrawal of its forces at the end of phase one. Under the new Egyptian draft, however, Israel would only reposition its forces to where they stood on March 2, leaving them entrenched in various positions in Gaza with no clearly defined timeline for a total withdrawal.

The deal states that on the seventh day, Israeli forces will redeploy east of Salah al-Din street, the main north-south thoroughfare running along the entire enclave, allowing for freedom of movement for civilians through the Netzarim corridor without restrictions.

Israel would also lift its full-spectrum blockade on the Strip on the second day of the deal and the flow of humanitarian aid would resume under “an agreed-upon humanitarian protocol.” This would include the delivery of an unspecified quantity of equipment and supplies to establish shelters for displaced people. “An agreed-upon mechanism will be established to ensure that aid reaches only civilians,” according to the draft. Israel has implemented a total ban on all food, fuel, medicine and other humanitarian goods from entering Gaza since March 2, one day after Phase One of the original deal expired.

On the third day of the proposed agreement, negotiations overseen by international mediators would begin “regarding the necessary arrangements for a permanent ceasefire.” This process, the document says, should be completed within 45 days, though this could be extended through the exchange of further captives. By the end of the negotiations, all of the remaining 59 Israeli captives, living and dead, would be returned to Israel and a large number of Palestinians held by Israel would be freed. “The mediators (the United States, Egypt, and Qatar) will make every effort to ensure the completion of the above-mentioned negotiations to reach an agreement on arrangements for a permanent ceasefire, in accordance with their commitment to achieving this goal,” according to the document.

It is on this point—the conditions for a permanent ceasefire—that Hamas and Israel stand in complete opposition to each other. The current draft effectively asks Hamas to agree to continued military occupation of Gaza and disarmament. While the original ceasefire deal stipulated the total withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza in the second phase, the new Egyptian draft refers only to “Israeli military redeployment” and an agreed upon “security perimeter.” In what will certainly be the most contentious issue from Hamas’s perspective, the document also calls for the “demilitarization of the Gaza Strip,” though it does not define what that means in practical terms. Hamas has maintained it will not lay down its arms until an irrevocable path to Palestinian statehood is established and a national military force constituted. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said repeatedly he will not agree to end the genocide unless Hamas surrenders, disarms, and exiles its leaders.

The draft would supersede the agreement signed in January and replace it with a loosely defined process for continued negotiations to achieve a “permanent ceasefire.”

In the event of any deal, the definition of disarmament will be the defining factor. While some news reports have suggested mediators have proposed Hamas store its weapons within Gaza as part of an agreement, there would be little to stop Israel from attacking those weapons depots. “I think the idea of them handing in the weapons to some neutral third party or to Israel itself, it's quite an impossible feat to actually get Hamas to do,” said Abdaljawad Omar, an adjunct professor at Birzeit university in the occupied West Bank. “Not only out of principle or ideology, but also out of realistic pragmatism around the question of what it means to give up arms with a state that has already stated that it wants to actually ethnically cleanse Gaza and ensure that Gaza is controlled quite directly by the Israeli military.”

Omar added, “It wouldn't be necessarily easy also for any political leader to get fighters on the ground to actually give up their arms, despite discipline. This would mean a historical break with what Hamas represents as an Islamic resistance group and a complete transformation that I don't think resistance groups are willing to go for.”

The proposal being pushed by Egyptian and Qatari mediators is being portrayed as a “bridge” deal; a temporary agreement aimed at getting Hamas and Israel back to negotiations that could end the war. In reality, the draft would supersede the original agreement signed in January and replace it with a loosely defined process for continued negotiations to achieve a “permanent ceasefire.” Hamas officials have consistently said that they would abide by the framework of the January agreement and have rejected attempts by Israel to create new terms or impose new demands. Hamas negotiators, however, have expressed a willingness to engage in a temporary deal on the condition it requires Israel to return to the original framework signed on January 17.

The talks in Cairo and the new proposal come just days after Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister held a series of meetings in Washington D.C. with senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

While the current proposal largely aligns with the one that Hamas agreed to on March 29 and which Israel rejected, the new terms related to disarmament and no clear path to complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza will likely meet stiff resistance from Hamas’s negotiators. “I don't believe that the resistance would agree to this, but there is tremendous pressure right now being applied on them from different parties, including Qatar and Egypt,” said Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian academic and the director of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs at Istanbul Zaim University. “Hamas are not fools. They're not going to release these captives unless there is some kind of an arrangement by which not just a truce, but the end of the war and full withdrawal, takes place. That has been the dilemma. Israel is not interested in that and Hamas would not be interested in releasing the captives.”

With President Donald Trump scheduled to travel to the Middle East in mid-May, Israel could face U.S. pressure to make a deal that pauses the military and humanitarian assault on Gaza and sees Israeli captives freed—offering Trump a victory he can claim as he meets with the rulers of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.

Trump, Al-Arian noted, “doesn't want the genocidal war to be in the region while he is visiting major countries in his attempt to collect trillions of dollars in the sales of arms and in other commercial deals. So they want that to be cleared,” he said. “They want Edan Alexander to be released and they also don’t want to promise any end of the war, [while] giving the impression that somehow there is a serious negotiation going on, which is not the case.”

A “Hudna”

While engaging in talks focused on a bridge deal, for months Hamas’s leaders have pursued a second, more ambitious, diplomatic track. The group has repeatedly told U.S., Egyptian, and Qatari mediators it would accept a comprehensive deal that would include the immediate release of all Israeli captives held in Gaza, in return for an end to the war, lifting of the blockade, and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Known as an “all for all” resolution, the plan would also include the release of a large number of Palestinians held by Israel and a long term truce, known in Arabic as a hudna, that would span at least five to ten years.

As part of this proposal, Hamas would officially step down as the governing authority in Gaza and allow an independent technical interim body run by Palestinians to administer the territory during a transitional phase of reconstruction ahead of a return to democratic elections. Hamas would still refuse to surrender its weapons unless a Palestinian military force capable of defending Gaza is established.

After Trump won the U.S. election, his special envoy Steve Witkoff took the lead role in ensuring a ceasefire and exchange of captives agreement was in place before the inauguration. Under pressure from Trump, Netanyahu grudgingly accepted terms that Hamas had agreed to in July 2024, though he made no secret of his intent to eventually resume the war.

When Trump’s special envoy on hostages, Adam Boehler, began direct talks with Hamas in February, the movement began raising the concept of hudna as a way that Trump could definitively end the war. Hamas, Boehler told Israeli TV on March 9, "offered a deal that includes the release of all prisoners from both sides, including a ceasefire of five to ten years, in which Hamas disarms, and the United States, along with other countries, helps ensure that there are no more tunnels, no more military activity, and that Hamas will no longer participate in politics." While Hamas disputed some of Boehler’s specific claims, chiefly on the issue of its disarmament, Hamas officials told Drop Site they were intrigued to hear an envoy of the U.S. president lend credence to the idea of an omnibus-style resolution.

The idea of a hudna is not new: Even before it won the 2006 Palestinian elections and subsequently consolidated its rule of the Gaza Strip, Hamas leaders had suggested such an arrangement with Israel and continued to do so in the ensuing decades. Israel rejected all such offers.

Al-Arian does not believe Israel will accept a hudna, or any long term deal with Hamas, for a variety of reasons: imbalance of power, lack of trust due to a long history of deals being violated, and Hamas being viewed as a non-state actor by Israel with only dozens of hostages as its leverage. Moreover, the far-right Israeli government has made clear it has no interest in any peace settlement with Palestinians, particularly Hamas. “The problem is if you had rational people within the Israeli establishment on the other side, you might do something,” Al-Arian said. “Israel is negotiating with Hamas for the simple reason that it has the only court that will compel Israel to deal with it in order to release the captives. If Hamas had no captives or zero prisoners, there would be no negotiating. There would be only demands.”

In a speech on April 17, Hamas’s lead negotiator, Dr. Khalil Al-Hayya, reiterated the movement’s readiness to start these “comprehensive package negotiations.” He emphasized Hamas’s opposition to partial agreements, which he said, “are exploited by Netanyahu and his government as a cover for their political agenda, which is founded on the continuation of a war of genocide and starvation, even if the price is sacrificing of all their own prisoners.”

Just two days after Al-Hayya’s speech—and a day after the families of Israeli captives called on their government to accept Hamas’s offer—Netanyahu formally rejected any deal that would guarantee an end to the war without full surrender by Hamas. Instead, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spent the past seven weeks waging a campaign to strip Palestinians in Gaza of their right to self defense and self determination. Since March 2, Israel has imposed a full spectrum blockade on the Gaza Strip, claiming its collective punishment of 2 million people—through the denial of food, medicine and other supplies to the Strip—is intended as a pressure campaign against Hamas. On March 18, Israel resumed its genocidal assault, killing more than 2,000 Palestinians, the majority of them children and women.

Israel’s position is that Hamas must completely disarm, exile its leadership, and formally surrender as a condition to halt the genocide. “Ending the war on those terms would send the message to all of Israel’s enemies that by kidnapping Israelis, the State of Israel can be brought to its knees, that it can be defeated,” Netanyahu said in a prerecorded video address on April 19. “Hamas's surrender terms that it has proposed are not new. It demands them time and again in every release deal. But what responsible Israeli leader could accept them after October 7? Certainly not me.” Netanyahu claimed that accepting these terms would prevent the realization of “the important vision of President Trump,” referring to Trump’s plan for the U.S. to seize control of Gaza and forcibly displace its residents.

While the original deal, signed on January 17 and put into effect two days later, called for the complete withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces and technical negotiations on achieving a long-term truce in a second phase, Israel began demanding that Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups agree to completely disarm and release all Israeli captives with no guarantees its forces will leave Gaza or that its genocidal war will cease.

“We reject the logic that exaggerates the primitive weapon of the victim intended only for self-defense, at a time when the United States is announcing the delivery of a large batch of lethal weapons and heavy bombs to the murderous occupation, which are being dropped on the heads of our defenseless people,” Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups said in a joint statement on April 15. “Any ceasefire that lacks real guarantees for an end to the war, a complete withdrawal, lifting the siege, and reconstruction will be a political trap that perpetuates the occupation rather than resisting it.”

On April 23, Mahmoud Abbas, the deeply unpopular 89-year old leader of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, delivered a speech attacking Hamas and echoing demands from the U.S. and Israel that Hamas disarm and release all Israeli captives. “You sons of dogs, hand over what you have and get us out of this,” Abbas said in a speech before the Palestinian National Council. “Hamas has given the criminal occupation excuses to commit its crimes in the Gaza Strip, the most prominent being the holding of hostages. Why have they taken them hostage? I’m the one paying the price, our people are the ones paying the price, not Israel.” He called on Hamas to “turn over its arms to the Palestinian Authority's institutions and end its rule in Gaza.”

Abbas’s remarks will almost certainly have little weight among Palestinians, many of whom view his administration as a collaborator with the Israeli occupation. “Abbas lives in la la land. There's a form of surrealism because the Israeli discourse is quite clear. Netanyahu himself said even with disarmament, there still will be ethnic cleansing,” said Omar, the professor at Birzeit. “Either he's not reading reality as he should, or he thinks that the Israelis are just simply conducting this war as a bargaining chip in negotiations.”

Several prominent Palestinian politicians and factions boycotted the meeting where Abbas launched his attack on Hamas. An overwhelming majority of Palestinians across the political spectrum have long wanted Abbas to step down. In recent months, PA security forces have aided Israel in its widespread attacks against resistance fighters in the occupied West Bank. “Our Palestinian people deserve a united national leadership that rises to the level of their immense sacrifices, remains loyal to their rights, and true to the blood of the martyrs, not a leadership that engages in security coordination with the occupation, yields to external dictates, is run through unilateralism, and perpetuates failure and division,” Hamas said in a statement responding to Abbas’s remarks. “Abbas repeatedly and suspiciously lays the blame for the crimes of the occupation and its ongoing aggression on our people,” added Hamas political bureau member Basem Naim in a statement.

While Palestinians hold a diverse range of views on Hamas as a political entity, the right to armed resistance has long been considered a fundamental right, according to public opinion polls. One senior Hamas official told Drop Site that the group’s armed wing, Al Qassam Brigades, could one day be folded into a national military. He cited the example of uMkhonto weSizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress in South Africa, which became part of the South African National Defense Forces after the defeat of apartheid.

In an interview with Al-Jazeera Mubasher, Hamas official Taher Al-Nunu reiterated this point. “The resistance and its weapons will remain as long as the Israeli occupation remains, until the Israeli occupation ends and the Israeli withdrawal from all of our Palestinian land, and our state is established, and we regain our rights,” he said. “After that, the resistance will become part of the Palestinian people's army and part of its official components.”

Al-Nunu cited three historical instances when Palestinians surrendered their weapons: during the Nakba of 1948, prior to the Sabra and Shatilla massacre in Lebanon in 1982, and following the 1995 Oslo Peace Accords. In all three cases, Palestinians were subjected to ongoing attacks against civilian populations and an expansion of Israeli occupation. “These experiences are sufficient for us to say that Palestinians cannot tolerate this and cannot even think about surrendering their weapons,” Al-Nunu said. “The suffering is great, the pain is great, but all laws state that as long as the occupation remains, the resistance must remain.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talks to U.S. President Donald Trump during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House on April 7, 2025. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images.

“A million red lines”

From the moment the ceasefire agreement was signed in January, Netanyahu made clear he was not going to abide by its terms. He promised his cabinet that he had received assurances from both the Biden and Trump administrations that Israel could continue its war against Gaza if it determined the ceasefire was no longer in Israel’s interests. Netanyahu portrayed the three-phase deal as only one phase aimed at freeing as many Israeli captives as possible while making no commitment to withdraw Israeli forces or end the war. Israel repeatedly violated the terms of the agreement and killed more than 130 Palestinians during the first 42-day phase.

Netanyahu refused to dispatch negotiators to iron out technical details for the second phase during which all remaining Israeli captives, living and dead, were supposed to be exchanged for Palestinians held by Israel. It was during this phase that Israel was to withdraw all of its forces as part of a “sustainable calm” that would pave the way for a massive reconstruction effort in Gaza and the creation of a post-war governing body for the Strip. Instead, on March 2, Israel imposed a total blockade of all goods, including food and medicine, on Gaza.

On March 29, Hamas announced it had accepted a framework for a deal put forward by the regional mediators. It was largely based on a proposal outlined by Witkoff, who characterized it as a bridge plan on the way back to more robust negotiations. It called for the release of five living Israeli captives, including Alexander, the U.S. dual citizen, in return for a temporary 50-day truce and a resumption of negotiations on implementing the second phase of the January ceasefire deal. Israel responded with a counterproposal it claimed was done “in full coordination with the U.S.,” demanding a larger number of captives be immediately released and offering no commitment to end the genocide.

Netanyahu then delivered remarks before his cabinet the following day. “Hamas will lay down its weapons. Its leaders will be allowed to leave. We will see to the general security in the Gaza Strip and will allow the realization of the Trump plan for voluntary migration,” Netanyahu said on March 30, referring to Trump’s threat to seize Gaza and remove Palestinians from their land. “This is the plan. We are not hiding this and are ready to discuss it at any time.”

Israel swiftly countered with a new set of demands it knew Hamas would not accept and made clear that even if Hamas agreed to release more Israeli captives than stipulated under the original deal, it would not return to the framework Israel signed—and the U.S. guaranteed—in January.

“What Netanyahu is offering is not a ceasefire agreement, but rather a surrender agreement. This is what he wants,” said Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas official. “He is setting these impossible conditions to thwart any ceasefire agreement. The truth that was clear and remains clear is that Netanyahu does not want to reach any agreement. He wants to go to the farthest extent in this criminality.”

And for the next week, Israel continued its scorched earth bombing of Gaza and ratcheted up its threats to “permanently” seize Palestinian land. It expanded its control over the southern city of Rafah along the Egyptian border and announced a new Israeli-controlled “corridor.” Israel’s defense minister reiterated that Israel would continue to use starvation as a weapon of war in an effort to collectively punish the Palestinians of Gaza. "No humanitarian aid is about to enter Gaza,” Israel Katz said, announcing that “preventing humanitarian aid from entering Gaza is one of the main pressure levers."

From the perspective of Hamas officials, they had accepted an offer, rooted in a U.S. concept, that extended beyond the scope of the original deal, a step Hamas had previously maintained it would not take. Hamas officials believed this would demonstrate to the Trump administration that it was operating in good faith in order to get the original deal back on track.

In early April, Israeli officials began pushing a narrative that there were positive signs emerging from recent discussions between Hamas and mediators from Egypt and Qatar, saying that Tel Aviv would back what was described as an “Egyptian proposal.” Israeli and Arab media reports claimed that Egypt had made clear that Hamas must disarm as part of any agreement leading to an end of the war. Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s special envoy, echoed the optimistic sentiments, telling the families of Israeli captives on April 10 that there was “a very serious deal on the table—it’s a matter of days.”

But none of this was true.

At the time, Drop Site contacted multiple officials from Hamas and other Palestinians involved with the negotiations and they all said nothing had changed since March 29. “We have not received any new offers since the last offer we received and announced our acceptance of at the time,” said Hamas’s Al-Nunu. “The occupation had derailed [a deal] itself and rejected any form of negotiations throughout the past period, while its media outlets were talking about progress, offers, and achievements. This means that it was practicing deception and media misinformation to cover up its crimes, especially the siege of the Gaza Strip and the denial of food and drink to two million Palestinians.”

Al-Nunu and other Hamas officials said that what was actually being portrayed as a new proposal from Egypt was in fact a set of new Israeli demands, including the disarmament of the Palestinian resistance as a condition for a temporary ceasefire. “There is a big difference between saying that the occupation presented an offer and saying that there was an offer from the mediators. There was an offer from the mediators to both sides, which Hamas accepted, but the occupation rejected,” Al-Nunu said. “The occupation wants to withdraw from the agreement and claim that it is presenting an offer. This is not an offer, this is a departure from the agreement, this is an attempt to deceive public opinion.”

Al-Arian said that the Israelis know that Hamas’s weapons supplies have been significantly degraded over the past 18 months and that Israel is insisting on total disarmament because it knows Hamas will reject it. “Once Hamas signs a ceasefire or a truce, whether that takes place over a year or two or five or seven, whatever the terms are, most likely the resistance would respect that whatever is left of its arms would be for self defence,” he said. “But Israel is not interested in that. Israel is interested in ending all kinds of resistance so that it can implement its hegemonic vision, which is basically to empty Gaza of its people to solve its demographic problem.”

On April 12, a Hamas delegation traveled to Cairo for further talks with the mediators and expressed an openness to increase the number of Israeli captives it would release as part of an agreement to reestablish the January framework. During these talks, the mediators informed Hamas that Israel’s position is that there will be no deal unless Hamas agrees to disarm, effectively ending the discussions. A source close to the Palestinian negotiating team told Drop Site the Israelis offered nothing new and insisted on only a temporary truce involving the release of a significant number of Israeli captives.

The source said that, for weeks, the Israelis and the U.S. had been pushing the demand that Hamas disarm as a condition for even moving forward with ceasefire negotiations. This position was echoed by Boehler, Trump’s hostage envoy, in an interview with Al Jazeera Arabic on April 16. “It is very hard to create a deal if Hamas is still holding hostages. They should release the hostages, and they should release them unilaterally,” he said. “This war must end through the release of all hostages and the surrender of weapons. The President [Trump] will support this, and will be present at this stage as well.”

Al Jazeera, citing a Hamas official, said Egypt presented this position in the recent talks as well. “[Disarmament] is not a red line. It is a million red lines,” Abu Zuhri said following the movement’s April 12 visit to Egypt. He reiterated Hamas’s openness to handing over all Israeli captives “living and dead, all at once,” in return for an end to the war. Abu Zuhri emphasized Netanyahu’s attempts to thwart any ceasefire deal, as well as the complicity of Trump’s administration. “Although Trump began his term with a clear declaration that he supported a ceasefire, what Trump is doing now is the opposite of his pledges. Trump is now complicit in the killing of Gaza's children. His hands are stained with the blood of Gaza's children and women.”

While Palestinian negotiators say they hold no illusions about Trump’s support for Israel, they also recognize that he treats foreign policy as transactional and wants a deal with Saudi Arabia that includes normalizing relations with Israel. It is unlikely that the Saudis would join the Abraham Accords as long as the Gaza genocide rages on and officials from the kingdom have said there will be no deal unless a deal on Palestinian statehood is reached.

“Trump understands transactions. He's not an ideologue or a diplomatic figure in this. He doesn't strike us as a dogmatic figure. So if the transaction needs, in his eyes, some sort of pressure on Israel, he will actually apply that pressure on Israel,” said Omar. “I'm not sure he wants to antagonize the Israel lobby and its influence in the United States. But I think that the element of pressuring Netanyahu and his dogmatic rightwing flank could be part of the play here as he goes and engages with Saudi Arabia.”

Netanyahu now stands at the zenith of his life’s political mission, presiding over a war aimed at annihilating the Palestinian people and removing them from their land. He has promised that he will not end the Gaza war until Hamas is eliminated and the Strip disarmed. He has embraced Trump’s threat to seize Gaza and remove its residents as official doctrine. But none of this can be achieved without the full backing of the U.S.

“It's not going to end unless Israel backs away; Israel swallows the fact that it cannot achieve its aims of so-called total or absolute victory by having the resistance surrender or raise the white flag or give up its arms or by expelling the Palestinians,” said Al-Arian, the Palestinian professor. He pointed to recent comments from Israeli officials suggesting that the war may continue through the end of the year or beyond. “If Trump gives Netanyahu that opportunity, then we're in for a long haul again with tens of thousands of people being killed,” Al-Arian said. “If Trump says, ‘Enough is enough. Let's find another way of resolving this,’ then that would end it.”