Currently Online 
Israel’s Ben-Gvir says will oppose deal, ‘dismantle government’ if Hamas rule doesn’t end
Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has slammed the planned release of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons as an “unbearable price” to be paid to reach a Gaza agreement.
As a result, Ben-Gvir said that he and other members of his Otzma Yehudit party would oppose the Trump-brokered plan.
Ben-Gvir also said that he told Netanyahu that he would not be part of any government “that will allow Hamas rule to continue in Gaza”.
“If the Hamas rule is not dismantled, or if we are only told that it is dismantled while in reality it will continue to exist under a different guise – Otzma Yehudit will dismantle the government,” he wrote in Hebrew on X.
Will Trump’s plan reach a second phase?
Muhanad Seloom, a political analyst at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, says he doubts the Trump plan will reach the second phase after the release of Israeli captives held in Gaza.
“This will be a test for American President Trump, if he will be the real guarantor that Arab states will [be able to] rely on,” Seloom told Al Jazeera.
“Will Netanyahu and President Trump see this through? I doubt it, but I hope that it will happen.”
Will Hamas agree to hand over its weapons?
Israel and Hamas may have agreed to the first phase of a United States-backed ceasefire deal, but contentious differences between the two sides still remain, particularly when it comes to the fate of the Palestinian group’s weapons.
Israel has long insisted that Hamas surrender all of its weapons if its two-year war on Gaza is to end, as well as demanding that the group relinquish governance of the Palestinian enclave and dissolve itself as an organisation.
For its part, Hamas has publicly rejected calls to give up its weapons, but experts say that the group has expressed openness in private to hand over some of its arsenal.
“When it comes to disarmament, this is where you have seen the biggest shift in Hamas’s position,” said Hugh Lovatt, an expert on Israel-Palestine with the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).
“[Hamas officials] have said in private to interlocutors that the group may be open to a decommissioning process of Hamas’s offensive weapons,” he told Al Jazeera.
