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Benjamin Netanyahu was under pressure on Friday from far-right members of his government to reject a plan announced by Donald Trump under which Hamas would disarm in exchange for a phased Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
The US president said overnight that his Board of Peace had reached an agreement for the “complete disarmament of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza”, and that Israeli forces would withdraw from the Palestinian enclave “as disarmament is completed”.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister, called the deal “unacceptable” on Friday and demanded Netanyahu, prime minister, reject it — despite US officials insisting it was in line with a 20-point plan drawn up by Trump last October that Israel had already agreed to.
“You only talk with Nazis through the crosshairs — and no other way,” Ben-Gvir wrote on X on Thursday as details of the deal leaked out. “After the 7.10 massacre [October 7 2023], the prime minister must clarify even to our best friends: the only solution in Gaza to which Israel is willing to be party to is encouraging emigration and destroying Hamas.”
Hamas on Friday said any progress on the new roadmap was first contingent on Israel fulfilling its prior obligations, including increasing humanitarian aid flows into the war-ravaged territory.
The Board of Peace, the controversial international body formed earlier this year to oversee postwar Gaza, on Friday released the full text of a new “roadmap” to fulfilling Trump’s 20-point ceasefire plan. The initial agreement was reached last October, bringing to a halt two years of devastating war between Israel and Hamas.
Included in the new text were conditions which analysts highlighted could be politically difficult for Netanyahu to accept, including a commitment to halt military strikes in Hamas-controlled areas of Gaza and the creation of a pathway to Palestinian statehood.
Netanyahu has not publicly commented on Trump’s announcement. But in a sign of the domestic sensitivity of any deal with Hamas, an Israeli official claimed Netanyahu had not discussed Gaza with the US president when the pair met in Washington this week.
The official said the latest plan failed to address Israel’s demands for “the complete disarmament of Hamas, including the removal of weapons from Gaza and the full demilitarisation of the strip as a precondition to any process”.
The same official on Friday reiterated that there would be no pullback “whatsoever” by Israeli forces until the Palestinian militant group fully laid down its arms.
The nascent deal also came under fire from some opposition politicians, with Avigdor Lieberman, the hawkish former defence minister who heads the Yisrael Beiteinu party, saying any agreement with Hamas was “a return to the same preconception that led Israel to the October 7 massacre”.
“Instead of reaching understandings with Hamas, Hamas must be eliminated,” he said.
Former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, the main opposition challenger to Netanyahu in the upcoming October election, said the deal exposed “the outrageous gap between Netanyahu’s promises and reality” and called it a sign of the long-serving premier’s “political weakness”.
US officials said there were no set dates for the implementation of the plan’s various stages. Analysts are concerned the sequencing between Hamas’s disarmament and any Israeli withdrawals remains a vital point of divergence. A more concrete timetable for implementation is supposed to be agreed in the coming fortnight, according to the Board of Peace.
It was also unclear when a new international peacekeeping force and Palestinian police units — to which Hamas is meant to surrender its weapons — would be up and running.
The Palestinian militant group also on Friday said the decommissioning of its heavy weapons was “conditional” on the fulfilment of a host of demands, including an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and “the establishment of an independent Palestinian state”.
Amjad Iraqi, senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, said Hamas was likely buying time given the pressures on it from mediators and the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza.
“It is about creating diplomatic momentum to keep throwing the onus on Israel to prove that it’s not blocking the ceasefire in front of the US,” Iraqi said, adding that Hamas was unlikely “to give up its entire identity attached to the armed struggle”.
However, US officials made clear that Trump expected both sides to abide by the deal, putting Netanyahu — who is hoping for the US president’s backing ahead of the elections — in an uncomfortable position.
“We are not asking Israel to do anything other than agree to the 20-point plan that they agreed to initially, and so we are very confident they will adhere to it,” said one US official.
“If they don’t, obviously President Trump would be very, very disappointed.”
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