Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that Israel had rejected a proposal for Hamas’s disarmament in Gaza that was announced by President Trump and the so-called “Board of Peace.”
Netanyahu made the comments in a brief video posted to his Facebook page, where he denied that the IDF was withdrawing from Gaza. “I stand firm on our security interests. We will not withdraw from our current lines until Hamas is completely disarmed,” he said.
Netanyahu also suggested that Israeli attacks would continue in Gaza, saying he has directed “IDF soldiers to do whatever is necessary to protect themselves, our territory and our citizens.”
He added that Trump and his advisors “believe they can disarm Hamas and demilitarize Gaza” through the deal. “They sent us a draft, we did not agree to it, we sent our comments,” he said.
A day earlier, Netanyahu held talks with representatives from the BoP, which walked back a key part of the agreement following the meeting. In the initial announcements from Trump, the BoP, and the body’s top Gaza envoy, Bulgarian politician Nickolay Mladenov, it was clear that the idea was for the “decommissioning” of Hamas’s weapons to happen as the IDF withdrew from Gaza.
Mladenov even explicitly said that the withdrawal “must move in lockstep with decommissioning,” but after his meeting with Netanyahu, the BoP claimed that wasn’t the case.
“Contrary to inaccurate reports, we note that the withdrawal of the IDF beyond the Yellow Line will take place only once decommissioning is complete, as Hamas committed to the mediators. This applies to light weapons, heavy weapons, and the tunnels alike,” the BoP said.
Hamas has maintained that it won’t begin the process of disarming until Israel ceases its attacks and withdraws back to the initial “yellow line,” the dividing line between the IDF-occupied side of Gaza and the rest of the Strip. After the October 2025 ceasefire deal was signed, Israeli forces were left controlling 53% of Gaza, but that has increased to somewhere around 70% as Israeli troops conducted ground incursions to seize more territory, a clear violation of the agreement.
Israel has also violated the October 2025 deal by continuing constant attacks in Gaza, which have killed at least 1,252 Palestinians. Dozens have been killed since Trump announced the disarmament deal, including two killed on Monday.
While disarming Hamas has been used as the pretext for Israel’s continued attacks and occupation of Gaza, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has previously said the IDF won’t withdraw from the Palestinians territory even if Hamas disarms and that the ultimate goal is to start establishing Jewish settlements.
