Hamas demanded that President Trump’s administration pressure Israel to withdraw from Gaza Saturday, calling it a key step in implementing the second phase of the US-brokered peace plan.
Hamas asserted Saturday it remained ready to proceed with the plan and urged Washington to pressure Israel to implement it, as Israeli officials warned that the terror organization was exploiting the process to prevent renewed military action.
Hamas informed US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace that it stood by the latest stage of the plan, under which its operatives would hand over weapons to a nascent Palestinian governing committee in the war-battered territory.
Speaking to Reuters on Friday, Hamas official Ghazi Hamad said the group would not disarm until Israel ended its attacks in Gaza, increased the flow of goods and aid, and pulled back its forces, per a ceasefire agreement reached last year. “We insisted to the mediators that Israel must abide by the agreement,” he said.
The dispute centers on the second phase of the Trump-negotiated deal.
Hamas says it has agreed to a deal aimed at fully ending Israel’s war on Gaza, including making provisions to disarm and surrender its weapons in stages. Under the agreement, Israel must withdraw its forces over a period of time.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that Israel will not withdraw from its current lines in Gaza until Hamas has completely disarmed.
In a video posted on social media,
“President (Donald) Trump and his team think they can get Hamas to disarm and demilitarize Gaza, we are examining this, they sent us a draft, we did not agree, it is not our draft, we sent our comments. By the way, we sent our comments before receiving any media campaign on the matter, because this is our position. We stand firm on our interests, I believe both wisely and firmly,”
Netanyahu said.
Israel has not publicly agreed to the latest proposal and Hamas has said it will not implement any part of the deal unless Israeli forces fulfil their own obligations to withdraw from Gaza under the agreement.
Israeli security chiefs have seized on Hamas’s agreement as a calculated stalling tactic.
Shin Bet chief David Zini reportedly said that Hamas signing the agreement “is a process of strategic deception aimed at buying time and ensuring we don’t return to [military] action in Gaza before the [October 27] election.” · “This is a strategic ambush by Hamas,” he asserted, according to the report.
Ofir Mizrahi Rosen laid out the deception: “Hamas agreed to the 15-point document, but it has not abandoned its vision of destroying Israel. There is a clear Hamas effort to kick the ball back to us.”
He also warned of the danger of internationalizing the conflict, the entry of foreign forces near Israeli communities, and – critically – the inclusion of Qatar and Turkey in the multinational force’s activation mechanism.
According to the Ynet news site, Zini also said Hamas views the roadmap signing as a “diplomatic October 7,” equivalent to the military success of the 2023 invasion.
Far-right Israeli cabinet ministers have urged Netanyahu to reject the plan outright.
Far-right cabinet ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Orit Strook have separately urged Netanyahu to block an international stabilization force from entering Gaza, after troops from Uganda and Morocco were expected to deploy in the coming weeks as a buffer between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants. Both ministers argue the roadmap as published is incompatible with Hamas’s disarmament and Gaza’s demilitarization, and have called for Israel’s security cabinet to convene and formally vote to block its implementation.
The proposal also comes ahead of Israel’s general election in October. Several far-right parties which have helped sustain Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition have campaigned against any withdrawal from Gaza.
The agreement was announced late on Thursday by US President Donald Trump, after the US-led Board of Peace and International Stabilization Force for Gaza announced that mediators from Egypt, Qatar, Turkiye and the US had finalised a roadmap for this next phase of the ceasefire.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday. “This is a monumental step toward lasting PEACE and SECURITY,”
Trump’s board maintains the sequence involves Hamas disarmament first.
The US-led Board of Peace has said that an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza will only take place after the disarmament of Hamas is complete, following a meeting between the body’s director, Nickolay Mladenov, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Hamas officials dispute this interpretation.
Hamas has said it will not implement any part of the deal unless Israeli forces fulfil their own obligations to withdraw from Gaza under the agreement.
The Israeli government has yet to officially comment, but one unnamed senior Israeli official told reporters on Friday that, despite “various publications” reporting “diplomatic progress in the Gaza Strip”, there would be no withdrawal from Israel’s current positions within Gaza before what it determines to be “the genuine disarmament of Hamas”.
In the viral moment that prompted these competing statements, Hamas’s readiness announcement last week contradicted Netanyahu’s longstanding insistence that Israel would not negotiate withdrawal before total Hamas disarmament. Trump’s Board of Peace framed the agreement as a historic breakthrough after months of stalled talks. Hamas countered that the talks showed progress only if Israel honored its ceasefire commitments first. Netanyahu’s office then declared the public version of the deal did not reflect Israeli positions and said concerns had been shared with Washington.
Netanyahu faces political pressure heading into October’s general election.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces a tough reelection battle, with opponents accusing him of failing
to achieve full victory in Gaza, while far-right coalition partners oppose any withdrawal.