Netanyahu’s Gaza Disarmament Demand is a Blueprint for Total Control
سعيد عريقات
February 16, 2026
News Analysis
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed there are “no heavy weapons” left in Gaza, portraying the remaining threat as limited to light arms held by factions and individuals. He then escalated the demand: Palestinians, he said, must surrender even personal weapons—explicitly including rifles such as the AK-47—as a condition for any post-war arrangement. Presented as a security requirement, the statement revealed a deeper political objective: removing the last meaningful constraint on Israel’s freedom of action in Gaza, namely the possibility that armed resistance could impose costs, uncertainty, or deterrence.
Netanyahu’s insistence on “disarming Hamas and other Palestinian groups” is not merely a battlefield condition. It functions as a strategic instrument designed to reshape Gaza’s future while narrowing Palestinian agency. In official Israeli rhetoric, disarmament is framed as the gateway to stability, reconstruction, and a “new Gaza.” In practice, however, it operates as a mechanism to eliminate the final obstacle to unilateral Israeli control over the territory’s security, borders, and political trajectory.
For Israel, armed Palestinian factions are not only a tactical problem but also a symbolic one. Weapons represent an alternative authority, and therefore an alternative claim to power. A disarmed Gaza would not simply be quieter; it would be structurally incapable of resisting a long-term Israeli security regime, whether through direct reoccupation, permanent buffer zones, or recurring raids. In that sense, disarmament becomes less about preventing immediate attacks and more about ensuring that no Palestinian entity can ever again generate leverage over Israel, militarily or politically.
This is why Netanyahu’s disarmament demand is consistently paired with his insistence that Israel must retain “security control” over Gaza indefinitely. Together, these conditions form a single architecture: Palestinians surrender force; Israel retains force. The result is not a reciprocal ceasefire framework but a one-sided security order in which Israel reserves the right to strike at will while Gaza is reduced to a managed population under permanent surveillance, coercive containment, and periodic military intervention.
Netanyahu’s formulation also offers him a politically useful narrative. He can claim Israel is pursuing demilitarization rather than conquest, and that any continued operations are simply the result of Palestinian refusal to comply. “Total disarmament” is an elastic slogan. It can justify continued attacks indefinitely because Israel can always argue that weapons remain, tunnels remain, or “terror infrastructure” remains. The war becomes self-perpetuating by definition: if the stated goal is absolute, then the absence of closure can always be blamed on the other side.
Yet the deeper issue is not only Netanyahu’s domestic calculus. It is the strategic logic embedded in the demand itself. Disarmament is being demanded in a context where Gaza has been devastated, governance structures shattered, and civilian life pushed toward collapse. In such conditions, the call for Palestinians to surrender even personal weapons resembles less a peace-building measure and more a demand for total submission: surrender first, and only then will relief, reconstruction, or political normalization be considered.
In classic demobilization processes, armed groups do not surrender weapons into a vacuum. They do so when there is a credible political settlement, external monitoring, and enforceable commitments that protect the population from reprisals. In Gaza, Palestinians are being asked to disarm while Israel explicitly reserves the right to continue military action and rejects any binding political horizon for Palestinian self-determination. This is not a recipe for stability. It is a blueprint for permanent domination.
Netanyahu’s explicit mention of personal weapons such as the AK-47 is especially revealing because it expands the disarmament demand beyond organized factions into the fabric of Palestinian society. It signals that Israel is not merely trying to dismantle Hamas as a governing and military structure, but also to eliminate the possibility of grassroots armed resistance. The objective is not simply to neutralize a movement; it is to neutralize a people’s capacity to resist at any level, including locally, spontaneously, or outside formal command structures.
This demand also cannot be separated from Israel’s broader approach in Gaza: mass displacement, the destruction of infrastructure, and the systematic weakening of any institutions capable of governing independently. Disarmament, in this framework, becomes the final step in a wider strategy: break political and social structures, then remove the means of resistance, then impose a new security regime. It is a sequence aimed not only at military defeat but at long-term political incapacitation.
Internationally, Netanyahu’s language is tailored to Western governments that prioritize “counterterrorism” framing. The demand is easy for many capitals to endorse rhetorically because it sounds like a reasonable security condition. Yet that endorsement often avoids the hard question: disarmament for what? If Gaza is disarmed but remains under siege, under military control, and without a political future, then disarmament is not a peace plan. It is a mechanism for ensuring Palestinians cannot resist the terms imposed upon them.
The political consequences are profound. A fully disarmed Gaza under indefinite Israeli security control would not be a sovereign territory or a viable political entity. It would be an enclave with no real capacity to protect itself, govern itself, or negotiate its future. That is not stabilization; it is the institutionalization of dependency and vulnerability.
Ultimately, Netanyahu’s disarmament demand should be read not as a technical security step but as a strategic lever. It is intended to eliminate deterrence, erase Palestinian leverage, and enable Israel to dictate the post-war order unilaterally. The central question is not whether weapons should exist in Gaza. The central question is whether Palestinians will be left with anything else at all.
