Israel will not accept the 15-point plan for Gaza set out by President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday.
“I want to clarify this: Israel rejects the 15-point document. I have heard people saying, ‘You didn’t say that.’ So here I am saying it again,” he told a Cabinet meeting, referring to the peace plan set out by Trump last year. “The IDF will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is disarmed,” he added.
Trump, who last month touted a breakthrough in his Gaza peace plan, said that Hamas has agreed to lay down arms. However, the Board of Peace’s proposal calls for a phased withdrawal of Israel’s troops from Gaza alongside the disarmament of Hamas.
Netanyahu said that Israeli forces are not going anywhere until Hamas completely disarms first.
“When I say Hamas must be disarmed, I mean heavy weapons, lighter weapons, all weapons. We are talking about genuine disarmament, not a fictitious one,” Netanyahu said Sunday.
Hamas had last month said that it would disarm but only after Israel withdraws completely and stops all hostilities. The group also said that laying down its heavy weapons would come later in the process, conditional on the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, reaffirmed that “as long as I am Prime Minister, there will be no Palestinian State.” The leader is currently facing a domestic political battle for survival ahead of elections set for October, with the status of the Gaza and Iran conflicts likely to prove pivotal.
The explicit rejection of the peace plan, frequently touted by Trump as a key foreign policy achievement, also comes after months of growing tensions between the White House and Israel’s leadership over Iran. The White House did not immediately comment on the remarks.
Responding to Netanyahu’s statement Sunday, senior Hamas official Basim Naeem said that the group expects the meditators and the U.S. to “exert pressure” on Netanyahu and his government to abide by the roadmap and “prevent him from obstructing the process for domestic political and electoral considerations.”
Hamas, he said, remains committed to the Board of Peace’s roadmap, which reflected a sense of “national responsibility” in consideration of the “interests of the Palestinian people.”
Meanwhile, Netanyahu said of the disagreements: “We are currently discussing this issue with the Americans. They have ideas; some of them are acceptable to us and some are not, and we know how to stand firm on these matters.”
Despite agreeing to halt strikes last October, Israel has continued its deadly strikes of the enclave. On Saturday, recovery operations concluded at the Karam Building in Gaza after 19 dead bodies were found under the rubble, according to the Gaza civil defense. Israel and Hamas both regularly accuse the other of breaching the ceasefire.
Over 73,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, according to the enclave’s health officials, including over 1,200 people since the ceasefire began in October. Israel said it launched its war in Gaza in response to the Hamas attack which killed around 1,200 people and took 251 others hostage.
