Hamas Will Not Disarm — The Money Already Knows It

The question was never really open. At 94% probability — and after a single-session surge of 67.5 percentage points — the market has stated as plainly as odds can state anything: Hamas will not agree to disarm by December 31, 2026. This is not a lean or a tilt. At this confidence level, the money is treating the outcome as settled. The argument the market is making is blunt: disarmament is structurally off the table, and anyone still pricing it otherwise is not paying attention.

The cluster surrounding this market reinforces the conclusion at every angle. A Phase II ceasefire — the diplomatic framework that would theoretically create the conditions for disarmament talks — sits at only 65% likelihood of arriving by year's end, itself a fresh and fragile surge. Foreign intervention in Gaza checks in at 59%, and Israel's airspace closure probability is declining. Meanwhile, Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon sits at a mere 9%, and withdrawal beyond the Litani River at 26%. The composite picture is one of a conflict that remains deeply unresolved: parties are not converging toward the kind of durable settlement in which a militant organization lays down its arms. The disarmament market is simply pricing the logical conclusion of everything else.

For this consensus to make sense, one thing must be true in the world — and it plainly is: disarmament would require Hamas to cease to exist as a political and military entity by choice, something no armed movement with active territorial control and regional backing has done under active military pressure. The traders holding this conviction at 94% are likely reading the same structural reality that historians, regional analysts, and intelligence professionals have long understood: disarmament demands are negotiating maximums, not outcomes. The Phase II ceasefire surge suggests diplomacy is moving, but diplomacy toward a ceasefire and diplomacy toward disarmament are two categorically different conversations.

What could break this? A scenario in which Hamas's military leadership collapses entirely — through attrition, internal fracture, or a decisive shift in Iranian and Qatari support — could create conditions where a successor faction or governing body formally agrees to lay down arms as part of a comprehensive political settlement. If the next Israeli prime minister, currently favored to be Gadi Eizenkot at 52%, pursued a radically different negotiating posture, the diplomatic landscape could shift faster than the market expects. These are not zero-probability events. But at 94%, the market is saying they are close.

This argument is the market's, decoded — not investment advice.