Israel will not accept the 15-point plan from President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday.“I want to clarify this: Israel rejects the 15-point document.I have heard people saying, ‘You didn’t say that.’ So here I am saying it again,” he told a Cabinet meeting, referring to the peace plan set out by President Donald Trump last year.
“The IDF will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is disarmed,” he added.Trump, who last month touted a breakthrough in his Gaza peace plan, said that Hamas has agreed to lay down arms.
However, the Board of Peace’s proposal calls for a phased withdrawal of Israel’s troops from Gaza alongside the disarmament of Hamas.Netanyahu said that Israeli forces are not going anywhere until Hamas completely disarms first.“When I say Hamas must be disarmed, I mean heavy weapons, lighter weapons, all weapons.We are talking about genuine disarmament, not a fictitious one,” Netanyahu said Sunday.Hamas had last month said that it would disarm but only after Israel withdraws completely and stops all hostilities.
The group also said that laying down its heavy weapons would come later in the process, conditional on the establishment of a Palestinian state.Netanyahu, meanwhile, reaffirmed that “as long as I am Prime Minister, there will be no Palestinian State.” The leader is currently facing a domestic political battle for survival ahead of elections set for October, with the status of the Gaza and Iran conflicts likely to prove pivotal.Responding to Netanyahu’s statement Sunday, senior Hamas official Basim Naeem said that the group expects the meditators and the U.S.
to “exert pressure” on Netanyahu and his government to abide by the roadmap and “prevent him from obstructing the process for domestic political and electoral considerations.”Hamas, he said, remains committed to the Board of Peace’s roadmap, which reflected a sense of “national responsibility” in co...