“Hamas is committed to disarming according to the ceasefire agreement. But Hamas is not disarming. It is rebuilding its control,” Col. Nadav Shoshani tells a group of foreign reporters gathered at a base of the IDF’s 252nd Division in Gaza.
“Hamas is committed to disarming according to the ceasefire agreement. But Hamas is not disarming. It is rebuilding its control.”
Shoshani is the IDF’s international spokesman. The position is located about 200 meters from the so-called Yellow Line, the dividing point between the 47% of the Gaza Strip still held by Hamas and the 53% currently controlled by Israel.
We are in what was once the neighborhood of Shejaia, located on the southern outskirts of Gaza City. Now it is rubble.
It’s not my first time in this vicinity, once a notable stronghold of Hamas. I was here in December 2023. Then, the Merkava tanks of the 36th Division were crashing into central Gaza. There were still 251 hostages. The memories of October 7 were shocking and raw, and there was a sort of fervor for the war that we all felt. Then, the mission seemed clear. Now, by contrast, a month into the ceasefire, the future appears rather more ambiguous, with many more questions than answers regarding the way things may be headed.
Shejaia, over which the IDF fought three major engagements in the course of the last three years (I witnessed the first), has been reduced to ruins. But a little beyond the point which marks the Yellow Line, one may make out the first buildings of Gaza City itself, still under Hamas control. The Gaza City skyline appears surprisingly intact. Hamas’s capital survived the war, and is evidently now returning to a kind of life, still under Hamas rule.
The 252nd Division is a reserve armored formation, but the base we visit is held by the infantry element of the unit. Its mission in Shejaia, according to Shoshani, is to “hold the line, remove terror infrastructure, and secure aid going in.” This is in accordance with the ongoing implementation of the first phase of US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan.
There are, according to the IDF’s international spokesman, “daily violations” of the ceasefire by Hamas fighters. These have included an attempt two weeks ago to place explosives in a house on the Israeli side of the line.
The IDF has no accurate figure, but the “vast majority” of the Gaza population is living in the Hamas-controlled part of the Strip.
There is sporadic automatic gunfire coming from somewhere in the distance. Shoshani thinks it’s from within Gaza City itself. Perhaps Hamas is settling accounts with one or another of its enemies within the city. A UAV buzzes overhead. Nothing seems to be moving amid the gray rubble and ruins between the point that marks the Yellow Line and the position of Division 252. But further in, evidently, life is proceeding along the lines that Hamas prefers. The IDF has no accurate figure, but the “vast majority” of the Gaza population is living in the Hamas-controlled part of the Strip.
The goal of the 20-point plan is that the current de facto partition of Gaza, which may be observed along the line between Gaza City and Shejaia, should not freeze into an ongoing reality. Rather, the plan envisages the disarmament of Hamas and the end of its existence as a de facto governing force in Gaza.
Different types of pressure can be used to disarm Hamas: IDF’s international spokesman
The IDF’s international spokesman suggests that “there are different types of pressure which can be placed on them to make them disarm.”
What form might such pressure take?
Viewed from the positions of the 252nd Division close to the Yellow Line, it is starkly obvious that the living part of Gaza remains very much under Hamas’s control.
Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations Danny Danon said this week that the emergent International Stabilization Force, now with a mandate from the UN, would need to “stabilize the situation and strip Hamas of its weapons.” Col. Shoshani agreed that this would indeed be the responsibility of this emergent force.
Such statements seem somewhat at odds with observable reality. Hamas has made clear that it rejects any clause related to the disarmament of Gaza, or harming the “Palestinian people’s right to resistance.” Viewed from the positions of the 252nd Division close to the Yellow Line, it is starkly obvious that the living part of Gaza remains very much under Hamas’s control. Does anyone seriously believe that an international force is going to deploy and seek to disarm by coercive means an Islamist militia that doesn’t want to be disarmed? And what happens when the Islamist militia starts shooting back?
The general sense one gets from reading and hearing statements by Israeli officials in this regard is that no one really believes this, but there is a need to pretend to do so, at least in public. This is because Israel doesn’t have any options other than the 20-point plan, and the US administration evidently does believe in its various provisions.
The true picture is different. At the outset of the war, when the blood from the October 7 massacres was hardly dry, and three divisions were heading into Gaza, Israel defined its war aims as freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas rule in Gaza. Reality didn’t really allow for pursuing both those aims with full vigor simultaneously, so Israel pursued the first, at the expense of the second. The result is that the hostages are now free, but Hamas rule over half of Gaza and nearly all its population remains. The two real options are that Israel either now or in the future commit to completing the job of reconquering Gaza and destroying the Hamas authority there, or that Hamas, as an organized, armed, and dominant political-military force in Gaza, is set to survive.
Hamas, visible in living, intact Gaza City a few hundred meters away, is reemerging and strengthening itself.
The international stabilization force, if it is deployed, is likely to form a severely complicating factor regarding any attempt at realizing the first option, and would almost certainly eventually serve as a guarantor for the second.
In the meantime, the IDF, via positions like the ones held by Division 252 in Shejaia, is holding the lines and maintaining control over the largely empty 53% of Gaza, which it controls. And Hamas, visible in living, intact Gaza City a few hundred meters away, is reemerging and strengthening itself.
What this means is that despite the losses and the huge efforts made since October 2023, the essential question facing Gaza – namely, the continued existence or the removal of an armed and hostile Islamist sovereignty in the area – remains unresolved.
Published originally on November 21, 2025.
