Israel has rejected US president Donald Trump’s Board of Peace 15-point plan for Gaza, and will not withdraw until Hamas fully disarms, prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.
“Israel rejects the 15-point document,” Netanyahu said, referring to a plan endorsed in late July by Hamas.
The Israeli military “will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is genuinely disarmed and will continue to thwart threats against our forces and our citizens,” Netanyahu said at a cabinet meeting.
The document, the latest stage in a US-led ceasefire announced in October that has reduced but not ended Israeli operations in Gaza, said Hamas would surrender weapons to a nascent Palestinian governing body.
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The plan said Israel would begin pulling out forces in tandem with the disarmament, an idea adamantly rejected by Israel which also wants Hamas to destroy its weapons.
Netanyahu said Israel was speaking with the US about its objections. “They have ideas; some of them are acceptable to us and some are not, and we know how to stand our ground on these matters,” he said.
Netanyahu said Hamas must give up all of its weapons, a goal that Board of Peace members say is not realistically achievable. “We are talking about real disarmament, not fictitious disarmament,” Netanyahu said.
Trump announced last month there had been a breakthrough in his plan to end the war, which both Israel and Hamas agreed to last year and which started with the ceasefire.
Israel has continued to carry out strikes on Gaza since agreeing to the ceasefire last October.
Trump said that Hamas, which ruled Gaza for nearly two decades before carrying out the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war, had agreed to lay down its weapons. – Guardian, Reuters
