With the release of all remaining living Israeli hostages by Hamas on 14 October, in accordance with the first phase of the Trump-brokered peace process, many celebrated the presumed end of the two-year-long war in Gaza. Yet point 13 of the second phase of the agreement notably involves the ‘demilitarization of Gaza’ and the exclusion of ‘Hamas and other factions’ from ‘any role of governance in Gaza’. The plan stipulates an apolitical, technocratic Palestinian committee overseen by an international ‘Board of Peace’.
Yet, almost a month after the guns fell silent, Hamas still hasn’t been exiled to the pages of history books. Worst still, some have been waving off the notion of disarming Hamas as unrealistic and unnecessary. This may send us back to the case study of the final days of the German Third Reich that did not quite cease to exist with the unconditional surrender of German forces on V-Day.
History buffs know that prior to Adolf Hitler’s suicide in his Berlin bunker, in late April 1945, he nominated Admiral Karl Dönitz, then commander of the navy, to succeed him as Reichpräsident. Dönitz subsequently authorized the unconditional surrender of German forces, ending World War II in Europe on 8 May.
However, few people are aware that Dönitz’s rump government continued to function in the small town of Flensburg for another 15 days, only to be disbanded by British troops. These final days of Nazi Germany provide interesting insights into the way the international community should be viewing Hamas’s continued exercise of power in some 50 per cent of the Gaza Strip going forward.
When forming his government, Dönitz was careful not to include prominent Nazi leaders in his cabinet, as their participation would have been unacceptable to the Western Allies. Notably, he dismissed Heinrich Himmler, sending the SS leadership out of Flensburg even before the unconditional surrender. After V-Day, he tried to pin all the genocidal atrocities of the Nazi regime on the SS, claiming that they were carried out in secret. Dönitz hoped to gain legitimacy by proving himself useful to the Western Allies as the head of a provisional government that was fiercely anti-Communist.
Although it was previously agreed to partition Germany into distinct occupation zones, some Allied leaders—most notably British Prime Minister Winston Churchill—felt that the temporary recognition of the Dönitz Administration might be useful, for example, as a bargaining chip against the possible expansion of Soviet influence into Denmark. In the end, however, this notion was deemed immaterial as British forces disbanded the Dönitz government and arrested their members as POWs (prisoners of war), extinguishing the last remnant of the Nazi regime in Germany once and for all on 23 May.
‘If Hamas refuses to demilitarize, it’ll be a violation of the agreement, and that’ll have to be enforced’
In 1945 it was obvious to the victors that the Denazification and reconstruction of Germany based on Western democratic values would be impossible without the total disarmament and exclusion of any Nazi remnant. As we recall, Dönitz was willing to surrender and disarm rather than fight until the last man, acknowledged some of the mass murders, and tried to position himself as a useful actor in a possible anti-Soviet front. Yet, his administration still flew Nazi flags, his cabinet was solely made up of members of the Nazi party—some of whom were themselves complicit in genocidal acts—and he kept a bust of Hitler in his office in Flensburg.
This chapter of history should be front and centre in the minds of the international community as negotiation teams are moving forward with the implementation of the second phase of the ceasefire agreement. So far, the Trump administration has made it clear that there will be no case closed in Gaza without the complete disarmament of Hamas.
Shortly after the agreement came into effect, the President made a plain threat to the Gaza-based terror group: ‘If they don’t disarm, we will disarm them and it will happen quickly and perhaps violently.’ Vice President JD Vance, as well as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, echoed this message during their visits to Israel, with Rubio pledging: ‘If Hamas refuses to demilitarize, it’ll be a violation of the agreement, and that’ll have to be enforced.’
Hamas, on its part, refuses to do so willfully. As the terror group still controls some 50 per cent of the enclave, senior Hamas figures such as Basem Naim and Ghāzi Hamad already clarified the group’s fierce opposition to disarming, perhaps hoping to slip their representatives as disguised technocrats in a future Gaza government.
The Trump-brokered deal offers unprecedented opportunities in Gaza and throughout the larger Middle East, as the expansion of the Abraham Accords is at the forefront of the administration’s agenda. Yet the continued existence of a hotbed of terrorism in Gaza can put all of this in jeopardy. The international community should stand firm in making it clear that there is no viable future in Gaza with Hamas still in power—not even in a Dönitz-like enclave of control.
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