Even tho Israel’s military has essentially stopped strikes in the region under pressure from the U.S. President, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, reiterated in televised remarks to his right-wing government on Sunday that he rejects Trump’s current proposal for Gaza.
Netanyahu is currently in the midst of his re-election campaign, with a vote scheduled for October 27. However, he faces opposition from far-right ministers who are upset about the concessions made in Gaza, as well as his main military supporter, Trump, who is hoping for a fresh 15-point peace plan to help end the violence in the region.
Since Monday, when Netanyahu met with Nikolay Mladenov—the Gaza envoy for Trump’s Board of Peace, responsible for overseeing the Gaza ceasefire—Israel has reduced its attacks in Gaza.
According to someone acquainted with Israel’s stance, the country has decided to stop carrying out targeted killings, which it had been doing almost every day, and instead limit its military actions to what it views as pressing dangers in Gaza.
Timing in Trump’s plan is a point of contention for Israel and Hamas.
Last month, Trump made an announcement about a progress in his plan to end the war. Israel and Hamas were both in agreement, and as a result, Israeli forces are pulling out while Hamas disarms. To safeguard the enclave, an International Stabilization Force is collaborating with a new Palestinian police force.
However, problems have arisen quickly. Before Hamas disarms, Israeli forces in Gaza will not move, according to Israel. The Palestinian group Hamas has demanded that Israel end its strikes before carrying out its obligations under the arms embargo.
In his opening remarks to his cabinet ministers, Netanyahu stated, “Israel does not accept the 15-point document.”. Until Hamas is disarmed, the military will not withdraw its forces. This includes both heavy and light armament.
“And we are talking about genuine disarmament, not fictitious disarmament,” he stated, stressing that Israel is in talks with the US on the idea. Similarly, in a Tuesday social media post, Netanyahu stated, “They (the U.S.) have ideas, some of which are acceptable to us and some of which are unacceptable to us,” without providing any further details.
In an interview with Reuters on Sunday, top Hamas leader Basem Naim said that the group was still dedicated to the plan they had agreed upon with mediators in Cairo ten days prior.
“We expect the mediators and the U.S. guarantor to press Netanyahu and his government to adhere to the roadmap and not obstruct the process for internal political and electoral reasons, while continuing to jeopardize the region’s security and stability.”
Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right finance minister, lauded Netanyahu.
“The demise of Hamas was our primary objective when we went to war,” he declared. “The military is unable to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, not even by a millimeter. Reconstruction in the Gaza Strip cannot commence unless Hamas and the Strip itself are dismantled and demobilized.
Just last month, Trump made the announcement that the Iranian-backed Hamas, the governing group of Gaza for over twenty years prior to the attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which started the Gaza war, had agreed to disarm.
Hamas doesn’t want the word “disarmament” used, so they claimed they would just transfer weaponry to a Palestinian technocrat government backed by the US, which would then oversee affairs in Gaza under the auspices of Trump’s Board of Peace.
In order to prevent a possible return of hostilities, Hamas stated that it had agreed to the plan. However, it went on to say that the accord could only be put into action if Israel fulfilled its own obligations, which included withdrawing.
Before ending the targeted assaults on Monday, Israel had sworn to find and kill every militant involved in the October 2023 attack, as part of the U.S.-mediated agreement to end the war.
Israeli attacks since the truce have killed more than 1,250 individuals, the majority of them were civilians, according to health officials in Gaza. The exact number of casualties among Hamas’s fighters remains unknown.
After two-thirds of the enclave was invaded and populated by Israeli troops, nearly all of its over 2 million citizens were forced to live in improvised tents or destroyed structures on a small strip of land along the coast controlled by Hamas.
