What a Canadian general's 15-year odyssey in Northern Ireland can tell us about disarming Hamas

That experience may contain some pointers for the path to peace between Israel and Hamas — and to ending the war in the Gaza Strip. It is fragile for the moment and fraught, as alarming images showing Hamas fighters carrying out public executions of rival factions in Gaza attest.

Trump said he has assented to the group reasserting security in the territory temporarily, but a potential conflict may be brewing over plans to disarm the militant group.

Hamas’s political leaders claim that its weapons will be handed over only to those tasked with protecting Gaza from future Israeli aggression. But Trump has warned of swift and brutal repercussions if Hamas strays from his 20-point peace plan, which includes a process for Hamas and other armed factions to hand in their weapons in return for amnesty. 

“If they don’t disarm, we will disarm them,” he said, “and it will happen quickly and perhaps violently.”

That tone and approach are at odds with the lessons learned by the uniquely named Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, which de Chastelain chaired right through to the release of its greatly delayed final report in 2011.

One is the need to establish dialogue and trust with combatants if they are to turn in their guns, bullets, rockets and explosives — if they are to forsake violence and commit to peace.

Another is to acknowledge that it can take time — lots of it — to establish those conditions after such a long and brutal conflict.

As the final report of de Chastelain’s commission noted: “When it became clear that decommissioning … would indeed be tied to progress being made in the political arena, patience became a necessity.”

In forging a ceasefire and the liberation of Israeli hostages in return for Palestinian prisoners and detainees, Trump has shown great resolve and determination.

Patience, not so much.

The rush to an agreement between Israel and Hamas last Thursday appeared to be driven by the approaching announcement of the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, for which Trump had spent months campaigning.

He now boasts of having “ended eight wars in just eight months.” With Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visiting the White House on Friday, and a meeting planned between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest, the expectation is that Trump will now be keen to extend his record as a peacemaker to a ninth conflict.

But with the first phase of the Israel-Hamas deal — the exchange of hostages, prisoners and the bodies of the dead — mostly in hand, efforts are turning now to thornier issues.

How to disarm Hamas and Gaza’s other militant groups is a top concern, as is the formation of a temporary administration to deliver services, the makeup and deployment of a multinational security force, and rebuilding the shattered Palestinian territory, including homes, hospitals and schools.

With so many balls up in the air, the chance of them tumbling to the ground is great.

It is reminiscent, in fact, of the state of play in Northern Ireland when the disarmament commission issued its first formal report in 1996, pledging to a divided society that “we have no stake … other than an interest in seeing an end to the conflict and in the ability of its people to live in peace.”

It was still two years before the historic 1998 Good Friday Agreement would be signed, bringing a formal end to decades of sectarian violence between Catholics and Protestants. Central to that lasting peace was the process for getting paramilitary groups such as the nationalist Irish Republican Army and the opposing loyalist forces, such as the Ulster Volunteer Force, to give up their vast weapons stocks.

And the commission chaired by the now-88-year-old de Chastelain, who declined an interview request this week, was under no illusions about the enormity of the stakes, writing in its initial 1996 report that it was a “critical time” in Northern Ireland’s history.

“The peace process will move forward, or this society could slip back to the horror of the past quarter century.”

That urgency didn’t get the disarmament commission any quick results.

The Good Friday Agreement laid out a two-year timeline for the various paramilitaries to hand over their weapons. But when the May 22, 2000, deadline arrived, only the Loyalist Volunteer Force had participated, transporting three submachine guns, blast bombs and detonators from to an east Belfast workshop where they were destroyed under de Chastelain’s watch.

A new disarmament deadline was set — June 2001 — but when it came due without any further weapons stocks being handed over, the Canadian general warned that his patience was running out.

“John de Chastelain stressed that he and his colleagues did not want to be irresponsible or walk away from their commitments,” read notes of a meeting he held with Irish government officials, which were released to the public in 2023. “But they had personal lives they needed to get on with.”

Those same notes suggested the commissioner’s exasperation could be used to pressure the IRA, the largest of the republican paramilitary factions, into finally giving up its guns.

After some political brinksmanship, including the resignation of David Trimble, the first minister of Northern Ireland, who complained the IRA was in breach of its commitments, the nationalist paramilitary group handed over its first batch of weapons in October 2021.

But decommissioning all of the weapons from all of the groups was a complex and drawn-out affair. There were only estimates about how many guns, missiles, explosives and rounds of ammunition were stashed in caches across the country.

The commission chalked it up to “the passage of time and fading memories,” splits between paramilitary groups, the deaths of individuals responsible for hiding and storing the weapons and the overall hazy record keeping over several explosive decades.

One might reasonably expect similar difficulties accounting for every Hamas bullet and bomb in Gaza, given the widespread destruction and the fact that so many commanders and fighters in its militia, the al-Qassam Brigades, have been killed in the two-year war with Israel.

The IRA’s final weapons handover occurred in September 2005, a full decade after de Chastelain had first accepted the mission to oversee decommissioning in Northern Ireland.

At a news conference marking the moment, he was asked why anyone should trust their assurances when the IRA had refused to allow the process to be photographed or recorded. De Chastelain replied that his commission staff had handled every weapon, examined them, counted them and weighed them.

And if people would not take his word for it, maybe they would trust the two other witnesses brought in to oversee the process, two men of competing cloth — one a Protestant, the other a Catholic.

Said Rev. Harold Good, a Methodist minister: “The experience of seeing this in our own eyes on a minute-by-minute basis provided us with evidence so clear that … beyond a shadow of doubt the arms of the IRA have now been decommissioned.”

It would take another five years for the remaining paramilitary groups to follow suit, with the Irish National Liberation Army, the Official Irish Republican Army, the Ulster Defence Association, and the South East Antrim Brigade each agreeing to give up their guns in a flurry between December 2009 and February 2010.

The final thoughts in the commission’s final report included advice that “might be usefully applied to other ethnic or sectarian-related conflicts.”

One conclusion: avoid temptations on both sides to declare victory, either on the battlefield or in the court of public opinion.

“Doing so will only harden an opponent’s resolve not to compromise.”

The other takeaway: a ceasefire will not lead to lasting peace until “both sides accept that while the opposition can perhaps be fought to a standstill, it cannot ultimately be permanently eradicated — at least, not without measures being taken that are unthinkable in a free and democratic society.”

“While guns may be eliminated by force,” de Chastelain’s report warned, “ideas cannot be.”