Israel rejects Trump’s Gaza peace plan, saying no withdrawal until Hamas disarms

Hamas agreed on 31 July to a disarmament roadmap presented by Trump's Board of Peace -- the body set up under his 20-point Gaza plan -- under which Hamas and other Palestinian factions would hand weapons to a Palestinian National Committee (starting with police weapons, then heavy weapons) under international verification, in a process tied to a phased Israeli withdrawal and Gaza's reconstruction under a new Palestinian government; Trump called it 'a monumental step' and thanked mediators Egypt, Qatar and Turkey. Israel rejected the roadmap days later, with Prime Minister Netanyahu insisting no troop withdrawal would happen until Hamas was 'genuinely' disarmed first, reversing the plan's sequencing. Trump son-in-law and envoy Jared Kushner then held over three hours of direct talks with Netanyahu in mid-August, plus an unprecedented two-hour-plus session with a Hamas delegation led by Khalil al-Hayya in Cairo -- engagement analysts called a 'submission' by Washington to the reality that Hamas remains politically indispensable -- but the talks produced no breakthrough, with Kushner stating flatly 'we will not allow Gaza to be rebuilt until the demilitarisation occurs.'

Israel continued near-daily strikes on Gaza through the ceasefire, killing over 1,300 Palestinians (including around 300 children) since the October truce began, according to Gaza health authorities; the Board of Peace's Gaza envoy, Nickolay Mladenov, publicly criticised both Israel's continued use of force and Hamas's failure to fully halt military activity, warning the UN Security Council in late August that a ceasefire collapse would be a 'point of no return' for the region. In early September, Israeli special forces captured the head of Hamas's internal security service in a Gaza City raid that killed at least four Palestinians, which Hamas condemned as a 'grave crime' violating the truce; Israel said the man had been working to restore Hamas governance and conceal ongoing rearmament.