Israel rejects Gaza plan that Trump unveils with fanfare, as Hamas says it has accepted the plan

JTA – Israel has rejected a Gaza peace plan advanced with much fanfare by US President Donald Trump, saying it did not adequately address disarmament by Hamas. 

“There will be no Israeli withdrawal,” an unnamed “diplomatic official” said in a statement issued in Hebrew to Israeli reporters. 

The rejection has spurred blistering expressions of anger by unnamed US officials in comments to reporters and has thrown into public view an area of dispute between the two long-time allies. 

The statement came in the hours after Trump posted what might have sounded like a dramatic breakthrough to his Truth Social account on Thursday evening. The US-convened Board of Peace had announced a “HISTORIC” agreement that would lead to the “COMPLETE DISARMAMENT” of Hamas, Trump wrote in a statement that the White House shared. 

“Congratulations to all on this amazing development, that everybody said could never be achieved!” Trump said. 

Referring to the Hamas attack on Israel that initiated the Gaza war, he added, “The threat that emerged from Gaza on 7 October will NOT be allowed to rebuild!” 

The Board of Peace had announced a deal several hours ahead of Trump, saying, “For the first time, Hamas officially has committed to an actionable plan for relinquishing all its weapons, which will be followed by Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.” 

Hamas officials have said they had accepted the plan in principle but were waiting for Israel to sign on. Ghazi Hamad, a senior official, told Reuters on Friday that Israel must accept the plan before Hamas would disarm, while a different leader associated with the group tweeted that the “ball is now in the enemy’s court” while also acknowledging that Hamas had accepted the proposal despite misgivings. 

“Certainly, it is not what our people aspire to after their epic battle on the path to liberation,” tweeted Basem Naim, a former health minister who now lives in Turkey. 

The Israeli rejection said the plan did not “adequately address” Israel’s demands that Hamas must be divested of its weapons, and that the weapons must be removed from Gaza and that the Gaza Strip must be demilitarised. It did not mention Trump or the Board of Peace, the entity Trump established last year in part to supplant the United Nations, a body he does not trust. 

“There will be no Israeli withdrawal from the Yellow Line in the Gaza Strip until Hamas is disarmed and the strip is demilitarised,” the statement said. The Yellow Line demarcates the areas Hamas and Israel control in Gaza; Israel still controls just more than half of the strip. 

The statement said these messages were conveyed to “envoy Tony Blair”, an executive member of the Board of Peace, without naming him as such. Other executive members include Trump intimates, among them, Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Middle East peace envoy Steve Witkoff; Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles; and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. 

The Israeli statement also didn’t mention Nickolay Mladenov, the board’s High Representative for Gaza, who first posted the news about the ostensible agreement, which Hamas has yet to confirm. 

“Implementation and verification have to be real,” Mladenov said. “Withdrawal must move in lockstep with decommissioning.” 

US officials bristled at the Israeli statement. “We’re not asking Israel to do anything that isn’t in the 20-point plan that they agreed to initially, and so we’re very confident they will adhere to it,” an official told the Times of Israel, referring to the agreement that brought about the release of Israeli hostages a year ago. “If they don’t, President Trump would be very, very disappointed.” 

The ceasefire that ended the hostage crisis did not last, and Hamas and Israel have been fighting in Gaza since, although with fewer casualties than characterised the first two years of the war. 

Axios quoted an official who was blunter. “He’s fucking got to stand by his commitments,” the official said of Netanyahu. 

Netanyahu, facing elections in October, is under pressure from the Israeli right not to relinquish Gaza. His coalition last year absented itself from the Knesset when the opposition brought up Trump’s 20-point plan for a vote of approval. Netanyahu last year accepted the plan in an appearance with Trump, but he has not sought its ratification. 

Axios also reported that Trump and Netanyahu spoke about Gaza last week, when Netanyahu met with Trump to discuss the next steps in the war Israel and the United States launched against Iran in February. 

The Israeli statement pointedly said, in its first paragraph, that did not happen. 

“The topic of Gaza did not come up at all between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump,” it said. 

In his statement, Trump also singled out Turkey and Qatar for helping to broker the deal. Israel reviles both countries as enabling Hamas, and their presence on the Board of Peace initially delayed Israel’s own entrance.