GAZA CITY: The US must pressure Israel to accept the next phase of the Gaza plan, a Hamas official said on Sunday, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he rejected the US-backed agreement.
“We expect the mediators and the American guarantor to pressure Netanyahu and his government to adhere to the roadmap and not obstruct the process for internal political and electoral reasons,” Hamas political bureau member Bassem Naim said.
He said the group remained committed to the roadmap agreed with mediators in Cairo 10 days ago.
Netanyahu restated his rejection of the Gaza plan in televised remarks to his right-wing government on Sunday, even as Israel’s military has effectively halted attacks in the territory under pressure from the US president.
Netanyahu is in campaign mode as he seeks re-election at a vote due on Oct. 27 but is caught between far-right ministers angered by concessions in Gaza and his key military backer, Trump, who wants progress toward ending the conflict there with a new 15-point peace plan.
Israel has scaled back attacks in Gaza since Monday, when Nikolay Mladenov, the Gaza envoy for Trump’s Board of Peace that oversees the Gaza ceasefire, met with Netanyahu.
A source familiar with Israel’s position said it had agreed that the military would only act against what it perceives as immediate threats in Gaza and no longer carry out targeted assassinations as it had been doing on a near-daily basis.
Trump announced last month that there had been a breakthrough in his plan to end the war, to which both Israel and Hamas agreed, with Israeli forces withdrawing as Hamas disarms and an International Stabilization Force working with a new Palestinian police force to secure the enclave.
But complications have swiftly emerged. Israel has said that Israeli troops in Gaza would not move before Hamas disarms. Hamas has insisted that Israel halt attacks before it begins implementing the part of the agreement dealing with its arms.
“Israel does not accept the 15-point document,” Netanyahu said at the start of a meeting with Cabinet ministers.
The military “will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is disarmed ... it means heavy weaponry, lighter weaponry, all weaponry.
“And we are talking about genuine disarmament, not fictitious disarmament,” he said, noting that Israel is in talks with the US on the plan. Netanyahu made similar remarks in a social media post on Tuesday.
The US has “ideas, some of which are acceptable to us and some of which are unacceptable to us,” Netanyahu said without elaborating.
Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich praised Netanyahu.
“We went to war with a central goal: the destruction of Hamas,” he said in a statement.
“The (military) cannot withdraw even a millimeter from the Gaza Strip. The Gaza Strip cannot begin any process of reconstruction before the complete dismantling and demobilization of Hamas and the Gaza Strip.”
Trump said last month that Hamas had agreed to lay down its weapons.
Hamas avoids the use of the term “disarmament” and said the group agreed to hand over weapons to be stored under a US-backed Palestinian technocrat administration that would run the affairs in Gaza under the supervision of the Board of Peace.
Hamas said it agreed to the plan in order to spare the people in Gaza a possible resumption of war, but it added that the implementation of the deal would depend on Israel first meeting its own commitments, including withdrawal.
Since the US-mediated agreement reached in October to end the war, Israel had vowed to hunt down every militant who had taken part in the October 2023 attack before stopping the targeted attacks on Monday.
More than 1,250 people have been killed in the Israeli attacks since the ceasefire, most of them civilians, according to Gaza health officials.
Israeli troops have occupied and depopulated two-thirds of the enclave, leaving nearly all its more than 2 million residents confined to a tiny strip of land under Hamas control along the coast, most in makeshift tents or damaged buildings.
