(NBC News)- Israel will not accept the 15-point plan for Gaza set out by 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 Trump last year. “The IDF will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is disarmed,” he added.
Trump last month touted a breakthrough in his Gaza peace plan, saying that Hamas has agreed to lay down arms.
The peace plan called for a phased withdrawal of Israel’s troops from Gaza alongside the disarmament of Hamas, but 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.
The explicit rejection of the peace plan, frequently touted by Trump as a key foreign policy achievement, also comes after months of growing tensions between the White House and Israel’s leadership over Iran. The White House did not immediately comment on the remarks.
Netanyahu said of Washington: “We are currently discussing this issue with the Americans. They have ideas; some of them are acceptable to us and some are not, and we know how to stand firm on these matters.”
The Israeli leader may consider it worthwhile to “enter a new confrontation with President Trump,” said Ronni Shaked, a research fellow at the Harry S. Truman Institute at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as his own popularity wanes ahead of October’s election.
