An official from Israel’s Finance Ministry, Ze’ev Elkin, said that Israel would not participate in funding Gaza’s reconstruction, finding the notion absurd.

“We will not fund the Board of Peace; there is no reason to,” he told a local radio station in Israel. “We were attacked. There is no reason for us to pay for the reconstruction,” he added, implying that Israel should not have to pay for a war that it did not ask for.

According to a separate news report, President Donald Trump allowed Israel off the hook for funding the efforts to ease pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu amid anger in Israel over joining the Board of Peace and serving alongside countries that are hostile to Israel, such as Turkey and Qatar. Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have each pledged $1 billion.

According to U.S. Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s peace plan will birth a “renaissance” in Gaza. He said in an interview that the $17 billion raised so far “is going to jump-start us. We’re going to have housing and mass transportation, and we’re going to be able to clear and demolish all the areas there and get it ready for a renaissance.”

Meanwhile, in his address at the inaugural meeting of the Gaza Board of Peace on Thursday in Washington, D.C., Trump expressed his confidence that Hamas will voluntarily disarm, despite the repeated rejections of such calls from Hamas senior officials such as Khaled Mashaal. Trump said that if Hamas doesn’t disarm, it will be “very harshly met.”

According to officials on the Board of Peace, reconstruction is directly tied to demilitarization of the Strip. Reconstruction will not begin until Hamas has disarmed — or has been forcibly disarmed — so that the group will never again threaten Israel.