Israel Rejects Hamas Plan, Demands Full Gaza Disarmament
Get the Geopolitics newsletter
Daily geopolitics — wars, elections, sanctions, the diplomatic moves that move markets. Free.
- Israel is demanding complete Hamas disarmament and full demilitarization of Gaza as a non-negotiable precondition for any IDF withdrawal from the Yellow Line, rejecting the current 15-point document as inadequate and conveying reservations to envoy Tony Blair.
- Israel insists there will be "no exceptions for certain weapons or certain people," with a diplomatic source telling the Jerusalem Post the deal framework must follow a "one authority, one law, one weapon" model.
- The Trump administration believes a deal with Hamas is imminent, with one source telling Axios "we've managed to bring Hamas to a place where they can't say no," while the Board of Peace works to cut off Hamas's foreign funding sources.
- The proposed road map places all weapons under the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, backed by an International Stabilization Force (ISF) led by a two-star US Special Forces general, with disarmament expected to begin within weeks of agreement.
- Israel would suspend its targeted killings campaign in return for Hamas halting all military activity and recruitment, though retaining the right to strike if new threats emerge — a framework modeled on the Hezbollah disarmament approach in Lebanon.
- Gaza notably did not come up during the Netanyahu-Trump meeting, according to a source, even as Cairo mediators race to finalize the framework and the US insists "everything is fully coordinated" with Israel.
- Israel was briefed on the Cairo meeting and accepts the US framing that "if Hamas cheats, everything stops, and Israel will not have given up anything," a position built on reciprocity rather than trust.
Why it matters: The core disagreement is sequencing: Israel insists full disarmament must precede any pullback, while mediators frame it as a reciprocal, verification-driven process where each commitment unlocks the next. For Hamas, accepting means surrendering heavy and light weapons to a US-led ISF within weeks; for Israel, it means trading its targeted killings campaign for a framework it can halt at any sign of cheating.
