This weekend, headlines have focused on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s apparent rejection of a Trump administration-backed proposal intended to continue the peace process in Gaza. At first glance, the disagreement may appear to represent another obstacle to ending the war. However, the dispute is not really about whether Israel wants peace, but rather what conditions must exist before Israel can safely withdraw.

At the center of the disagreement is one fundamental question: What does it mean to disarm Hamas?

Under the more recent proposal, Hamas would reportedly “decommission and store” its heavy weapons as part of a process overseen by U.S.-backed Palestinian technocrats. Israel would then begin gradually withdrawing from Gaza, while other armed Palestinian groups would also be expected to surrender or store their weapons.

The problem is that storing weapons is not the same thing as eliminating them.

That distinction is especially important when dealing with Hamas. Israel did not enter Gaza simply because Hamas possessed too many weapons. It entered Gaza after the slaughter of October 7 demonstrated what Hamas was willing and able to do with them. Any agreement that ends the war therefore has to address not only whether Hamas temporarily stops fighting, but whether it retains the ability to begin another war later.

The original peace framework addressed that concern far more directly.

That plan called for the demilitarization of Gaza, including placing weapons permanently beyond use, destroying military and terrorist infrastructure, and establishing an internationally funded weapons buy-back program. Whatever difficulties existed in implementing those provisions, the objective itself was clear: Hamas would no longer maintain an independent military capability.

The newer language appears substantially less definitive.

There is an obvious difference between destroying Hamas’s arsenal and allowing Hamas to place parts of that arsenal into storage. Weapons that remain physically available can eventually be recovered, transferred, hidden, or replaced. Even an international monitoring system would ultimately depend on Hamas complying with restrictions that directly weaken its own power.

Israel has understandable reasons to question whether that arrangement could work.

Hamas has governed Gaza for years while building an extensive military infrastructure beneath civilian areas, accumulating weapons, and preparing for conflict with Israel.

Israel cannot reasonably be expected to withdraw from Gaza only to discover several years later that Hamas used the period after the ceasefire to rebuild its military capabilities. Such an outcome would simply return both sides to the conditions that existed before the current war, with the possibility of another October 7 remaining intact.

This does not mean that every Israeli objection to every proposed agreement is automatically justified. Nor does it mean negotiations should end. Israel has significant reasons to want the peace plan to continue, and Palestinians have suffered enormously throughout the conflict. The Trump administration also has legitimate reasons to push aggressively for an agreement capable of producing a lasting political settlement.

But negotiations can only succeed if the agreement addresses the reason the war began.

For Israel, that means Hamas cannot emerge from the conflict with essentially the same military capability it possessed before October 7. Whether Hamas members remain involved in Gaza politically is one question. Whether Hamas retains weapons capable of threatening Israeli civilians is another.

Those issues should not be confused.

There is also a broader strategic concern. Hamas does not necessarily need to defeat Israel militarily to claim victory. If Israel withdraws while Hamas remains armed and capable of rebuilding, Hamas can argue that it survived the Israeli campaign and remained a military force despite everything that followed October 7.

For the Trump administration, the goal should therefore be not merely to reach an agreement, but to reach one that can survive after the headlines disappear. A genuine peace must do more than end the current war; it must make the next one far less likely to begin.