Benjamin Netanyahu just told the body created to implement President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan that Israel isn’t signing off on it, at least not as written.
Netanyahu rejected the Board of Peace’s 15-point Gaza roadmap during Sunday’s Cabinet meeting, drawing a line that puts him at odds with the very framework Washington has spent months building. His message was blunt: the Israel Defense Forces are not leaving Gaza until Hamas hands over every weapon in its arsenal, no exceptions and no partial credit.
“Israel rejects the 15-point Gaza document proposed by the Board of Peace,” Netanyahu said. “The IDF will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is genuinely disarmed.”
What the Board of Peace Proposed
The Board of Peace, the international body Trump stood up to oversee implementation of his Gaza peace framework, published its 15-point roadmap in late July. The plan is built in phases. Israel would complete its remaining obligations under the Sharm el-Sheikh Protocol and halt military operations, while Hamas would hand civilian governance and security functions over to a transitional body called the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza.
A separate International Verification Committee would certify compliance at each stage before the next phase begins, including full Hamas disarmament and an eventual Israeli withdrawal. But it’s the sequence of events that remains a sticking point for Israel. Netanyahu doesn’t trust the verification process to actually deliver disarmament before Israeli troops are asked to leave.
“It needs to be genuine disarmament, not fictitious disarmament,” Netanyahu said with the kind of skepticism that has defined Israeli deal-making with Hamas for two decades. “When I say Hamas is disarmed, that means the heavy weapons, the less heavy weapons, all the weapons.”
Hamas Says It’s Still on Board, Sort Of
Hamas insists it’s still committed to the roadmap negotiated in Cairo ten days before Netanyahu’s remarks. Senior Hamas official Basem Naim told Reuters the group expects mediators and the United States to pressure Netanyahu’s government into following through on the agreement as written.
However, this is the same Hamas that controlled Gaza for nearly two decades before the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack that triggered the current war. It’s also the same Hamas whose recent announcement that it was dissolving its Gaza governing body Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar dismissed as a Hezbollah-style trick, one designed to hand off garbage collection and municipal services to a technocratic committee while Hamas quietly stays the dominant armed force on the ground.
Given their track record, Netanyahu’s insistence on verified disarmament before withdrawal isn’t exactly coming out of nowhere.
Netanyahu, however, was careful to frame this as not breaking with the Trump administration. He praised Trump directly, calling him “the greatest of our friends in the White House” and crediting the U.S.-Israel alliance for keeping Iran from a nuclear weapon. The daylight between his Sunday statement and the Board of Peace’s own roadmap is still real, though, and it comes at a moment when the administration has been publicly selling momentum on Gaza, including a claimed breakthrough last month in which Trump said Hamas had agreed to lay down its weapons.
Netanyahu used the same Cabinet remarks to reiterate that Israel will not accept a Palestinian state in Gaza or the West Bank under his government, dismissing what he called “Fatahstan” and “Hamastan” alike. He also said Israeli forces had recently acted “forcefully” in Lebanon, calling it “very important activity,” and said Iran has held off attacking Israel directly only because Tehran knows the cost of retaliation.
The lingering tension between Israel and Hamas is now the Trump administration’s to manage. It built and endorsed the Board of Peace framework, and its closest ally in the region has now publicly stated that the framework doesn’t yet meet Netanyahu’s one non-negotiable condition: Hamas fully disarmed before Israeli forces leave Gaza.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.
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