An aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Israel will give Hamas a 60-day deadline to disarm, and if it doesn’t, Israel will restart its full-scale bombing campaign in Gaza.
Israeli Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs said at a conference in Jerusalem that it was unclear when the 60-day deadline would begin, but suggested it could start on Thursday when the so-called “Board of Peace” holds its first official meeting in Washington.
President Trump is convening the US-led board as Israel continues constant ceasefire violations in Gaza, where the IDF has killed more than 600 Palestinians since the truce deal was signed in early October.
Fuchs said that the Trump administration had asked Israel to give Hamas 60 days to disarm, and “we are respecting that.” After Trump and Netanyahu met at Mar-a-Lago in Florida at the end of December, media reports said that they agreed on a two-month deadline for Hamas to disarm.
Hamas has ruled out the idea of disarming without a path toward a Palestinian state, though some Hamas officials have suggested the idea of “freezing” the group’s weapons, or placing them under the control of an Arab force. The New York Times reported that the US was considering a draft plan that would allow Hamas to keep some of its small arms, but Netanyahu rejected that idea on Sunday.
The Times of Israel previously reported that if Israel restarts its full-scale bombing campaign in Gaza, the attacks are “liable to be more intense and more widespread than previous rounds, as Israeli forces will no longer be constrained by the presence of hostages on Gazan soil.”
