Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected a United States-led peace plan that Hamas had accepted, saying Israeli forces will not withdraw until Hamas fully disarms.

A plan accepted by one party and refused by the other is not a failed negotiation. It is a negotiation that has reached the point everyone knew was hardest.

The sequencing problem

Almost every negotiation to end an armed conflict runs into the same structural difficulty, and it is worth stating plainly because it explains a great deal of what follows.

One side wants the other to give up its weapons. The other wants the first to leave the territory. Whoever moves first is more vulnerable if the other then refuses to follow.

An armed group that disarms and finds the occupying force has stayed has lost everything it held. A force that withdraws and finds the group re-arming has given up ground for nothing. Both fears are reasonable, and both are grounded in things that have actually happened in other conflicts.

This is why negotiators spend so much effort on sequencing, verification and guarantors — the mechanics of who does what, in what order, and who confirms it. Those details are dull and they are usually where agreements live or die.

What “fully disarms” would involve

The phrase sounds precise and is not.

Disarmament in practice raises a series of questions that have to be answered before anything can happen. Which weapons — heavy weapons only, or every rifle? Handed to whom? Verified by whom, with what access? Over what period? And what happens to the individuals who held them: prosecution, amnesty, integration into some future security force, exile?

In conflicts that have ended through negotiation, these arrangements typically take years and involve international monitors with intrusive powers. They rarely resemble a single act of surrender, which is what “fully disarms” suggests to a reader.

Whether that gap is a genuine obstacle or a convenient one is exactly what the two sides disagree about, and it is not something an outside observer can settle.

Why an accepted plan can still fail

Acceptance by one party is significant but it is not agreement. Peace plans are usually documents of principle, and a party can accept the principles while intending to contest every detail of implementation afterwards. Accepting also costs little and gains a good deal diplomatically: it transfers the appearance of obstruction to whoever declines.

That does not mean acceptance is always insincere. It means that “Hamas accepted” and “Israel rejected” describe positions taken on a text, not a settled reading of who wants peace.

Both governments also answer to domestic constituencies. Leaders on both sides face internal opposition to concessions, and any agreement has to survive not only the other party but their own coalitions.

The role of the third party

US-led plans carry weight because the United States can offer things neither party can offer the other: security guarantees, funding for reconstruction, diplomatic cover, and pressure applied to allies.

That leverage is also its limit. A mediator with a close relationship to one side is trusted less by the other, and any plan it proposes is read partly as that side’s plan. Mediation in this conflict has run into that problem repeatedly, regardless of the administration in office.

What happens meanwhile

The part that gets least attention is the interval. Negotiations proceed while the situation on the ground continues — for people in Gaza, that means the conditions of daily life do not pause because a plan is under discussion.

Reconstruction cannot begin in earnest without a settlement. Aid operates under whatever arrangements currently exist. Families displaced remain displaced. The people with the least influence over the outcome absorb the cost of the delay.

That is not an argument that anyone should accept a bad agreement quickly. It is a reason to keep the interval visible when reporting the diplomacy.

What to watch

Whether the mediators produce a revised text addressing sequencing rather than principle. Whether any third party is proposed to hold or verify weapons. And whether the withdrawal question is broken into stages, which is usually the first sign that a deadlock is being worked around rather than restated.

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Source: AFP via RFI, 9 August 2026.