Israel has rejected a Gaza peace plan advanced with much fanfare by President Donald Trump, saying it did not really guarantee disarmament by Hamas.
Israel said it would not withdraw from any part of Gaza until Hamas is thoroughly disarmed.
Hamas has said that it needs “personal weapons” to retain its authority over the Gaza population, raising the question as to who authorized them to exercise that power over Gaza to begin with.
It last won an election in Gaza in 2007.
Israel’s rejection has thrown into public view an area of dispute between the two longtime allies, even as Hamas says it never agreed to disarm completely.
Israel’s statement came in the hours after Trump posted to his Truth Social account July 30: The US-convened Board of Peace had announced a “HISTORIC” agreement that would lead to the “COMPLETE DISARMAMENT” of Hamas.
“CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL ON THIS AMAZING DEVELOPMENT, THAT EVERYBODY SAID COULD NEVER BE ACHIEVED!” Trump posted.
Referring to the Hamas attack on Israel that initiated the Gaza war, he added, “The threat that emerged from Gaza on October 7 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 said they had accepted the plan in principle but were waiting for Israel to sign on.
Ghazi Hamad, a senior official, told Reuters on July 31 that Israel must accept the plan before Hamas would disarm.
“Certainly, it is not what our people aspire to after their epic battle on the path to liberation,” tweeted Basem Naim, a former Hamas health minister who does not live in Gaza, but 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 demilitarized.
It did not mention Trump or the Board of Peace, the entity Trump established last year in part to supplant the UN, 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 demilitarized,” the statement said.
The Yellow Line demarcates the areas Hamas and Israel control in Gaza; Israel still controls just over half of the strip.
Executive members of the Board of Peace inclue Tony Blair, 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 did not mention Nickolay Mladenov, the board’s High Representative for Gaza, who first posted the news about the ostensible agreement.
“Implementation and verification have to be real,” Mladenov said. “Withdrawal must move in lockstep with decommissioning.”
US officials said:
“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 on Oct. 10, 2025.
“If they don’t, President Trump would be very, very disappointed.”
The 20-point plan requires total disarmament by Hamas. No progress toward that goal has been made.
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 in their meeting this week, when Netanyahu met with Trump in the US July 28. But Israel said, “The topic of Gaza did not come up at all between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump.”
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.
