It Could Happen Here Weekly 248

Andrew Sage (0:03)

Hey, everybody.

Robert Evans (0:04)

Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

Anna Elkurd (0:28)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to It Could Happen Here. My name is Anna Elkurd, 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 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. 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, Itamar Ben-Gavir basically said that it's not acceptable to Israel. So 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 a 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 2026

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 reverations 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.