
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced at a Cabinet meeting Sunday that he rejects President Donald Trump’s 15-point Gaza peace plan, vowing that Israel would not withdraw from the Gaza Strip until Hamas disarms and that Israel would continue to thwart threats and attacks from Hamas.
“I want to be precise. Israel rejects the 15-point document,” he said. “I heard people saying, ‘You didn’t say it.’ We said it, but here I am saying it again: Israel rejects the 15-point document,” he stated baldly, adding that Hamas must yield its “heavy weapons, the less heavy weapons, all the weapons,” and that he was seeking “real disarmament, not fictitious disarmament.”
The premier said that he is in discussions with the American administration, which is presenting various ideas, “some of them acceptable to us and some not acceptable to us.”
Israeli Energy and Infrastructure Minister Eli Cohen warned Saturday on Israeli broadcaster Channel 14 that “Hamas is planning a deception.”
It “will say that it intends to abide by the agreement, hand over some of its weapons, and obtain what we used to call, in the language of the past, a hudna. [But] the era of hudna is over,” he added.
Hudna means truce in Arabic, a ploy Hamas has used to regroup and rearm after war to prepare for the next attack.
Cohen further warned that Hamas is an untrustworthy terrorist organization whose promises are not worth the paper they are written on.
Also on Saturday, Doron Spielman, Netanyahu’s international spokesman, said that on Friday alone, Hamas violated the terms of the ceasefire 17 times with such actions as crossing over the Yellow Line and attempting to attack IDF soldiers.
He also explained that while Israel had accepted Trump’s 20-point plan, it rejected the newer 15-point Board of Peace plan reached with Hamas, to which it is not a signatory.
After Hamas said that Israel must withdraw as a condition for disarmament, a Hamas spokesman said Saturday that it accepts the 15-point plan.
“Hamas and other factions have confirmed to mediators their readiness to begin implementing the agreement and move to the second phase, provided it receives Israeli approval and that Israel begins implementing the agreement,” a Hamas official said.
“Hamas is urging the U.S. administration to exert pressure on Israel to compel it to abide by the agreement and move to the second phase,” he added.