Alternate headline: Israel Refuses to Fall for the Same Banana in the Tailpipe That's Been There for 20 Years.
Donald Trump really wants a win in Gaza, even if it turns into a loss. Benjamin Netanyahu has seen the result of those "wins" for Western leaders in Gaza, and in Lebanon for more than 40 years. The Israeli PM made it clear this weekend that he's done doing the Hamas Hokey Pokey:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that his country rejects U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest peace plan for Gaza.
The 15-point plan, issued by Trump’s Board of Peace, envisioned a phased peace process. Through it, Hamas would gradually cede its weapons and power to a new Palestinian administration, while Israel would withdraw its troops to the “yellow line” established in the ceasefire deal both sides signed in October 2025.
That's because the "latest peace plan" changed the sequencing of the October 2025 plan. The first plan required Hamas to fully and verifiably disarm before the IDF pulled back to a Yellow Line in Gaza. Trump's 20-point plan, which Hamas signed, required Hamas to disarm at step 6 after the exchange of all hostages and prisoners. The plan did not require Israel to pull back until step 16, after Hamas destroyed all of its tunnels and munitions and demilitarized Gaza (step 13). Israel made clear that it would not give up an inch of Gaza until Hamas complied with those terms.
Three months ago, the "Board of Peace" demanded Hamas' compliance with the agreement. Hamas refused, saying they would never disarm. Trump had wanted to negotiate with Iran at that time, and so decided to renegotiate the terms with Hamas in an attempt to achieve a comprehensive cease-fire. Just as Iran did in the Strait of Hormuz, Hamas also kept reneging on its earlier agreements in an attempt to force more concessions. The US side finally gave way by requiring Israel to begin its withdrawal before Hamas disarms, which is the same Hamas Hokey Pokey that the West has forced Israel to play for decades.
Netanyahu has grown tired of this dance, however, because it keeps resulting in dead Israelis. Twenty years of failed ceasefires and Hamas perfidy eventually led to the October 7 massacres and the greatest single-day loss of Jewish life since World War II. It took Netanyahu over two years to get Hamas into position for a complete defeat, and the Israeli PM is not about to allow them to get off the hook for more terror operations in the future. October 7 proved Hamas and Gaza to be an existential threat, and everyone in Israel is taking that more seriously than ever.
Yesterday, Netanyahu removed all doubt about his position on the concessions made to Hamas by Trump's Board of Peace:
Sunday was the first time that he formally declared a refusal to endorse it.
“I want to be precise here: Israel rejects the 15-point document,” Netanyahu said at a cabinet meeting. “The [Israel Defense Forces] will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is disarmed.”
“As long as I am Prime Minister, no Palestinian state will be established—not in Gaza and not in the West Bank,” he continued.
The Board of Peace's Gaza envoy has attempted to mount a PR campaign inside Israel to build support for the new plan. Israel won't be required to withdraw fully, Nickolay Mladenov told Channel 12, at least not immediately. Mladenov insisted that the Board of Peace will enforce these terms, all indications to the contrary notwithstanding:
Nickolay Mladenov, the Gaza envoy of the US-backed Board of Peace, sought to dispel skepticism in Israel about the board’s roadmap for the disarmament of Hamas in the Strip, arguing that the plan’s full implementation is Israel’s only “guarantee” of preventing a repeat of the October 7, 2023, massacre, and that it will be based on verifiable steps, rather than trust of the terror group. ...
“What happened on October 7 will never, ever be allowed to happen, as long as we have a full implementation of the Board of Peace’s plan… The option that we are offering today is the only way that we move forward that guarantees that this tragedy will not occur again,” he said.
Mladenov stressed that Israel is not expected to withdraw IDF forces from their current positions until there are tangible steps reflecting Hamas’s disarmament under the roadmap, which the terror group approved last week. The plan would see Hamas hand over control to a Palestinian technocratic body operating under the Board of Peace, called the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, or NCAG.
“Nobody is required to do anything – last of all Israel – before we actually have verified steps on the ground,” Mladenov said. “If there is verified decommissioning of weapons, that they are taken away from the factions, and stored, and ultimately rendered unusable, Israel then withdraws from Gaza.”
This argument has an obvious problem, which was that the same Board of Peace insisted they would enforce the original terms of Trump's 20-point plan, too. This latest episode of the Hamas Hokey Pokey makes it very clear that the Board of Peace has no intention of enforcing any agreement with which Hamas refuses to comply. They will just keep changing the terms of the deal and expect Israel to go along with the changes, in the exact same way every ceasefire negotiation with Iranian proxies has been conducted for the last 40-plus years.
Netanyahu says he's discussing this with Trump now:
"And when I say disarming Hamas, that means the heavy weapons, the less heavy weapons, all the weapons. And we are talking about genuine disarmament, not fictitious disarmament. We are now discussing this issue with the Americans," Netanyahu added.
Israel apparently did make a concession, but to Trump rather than Hamas. The IDF reportedly ended attacks on Hamas' command-and-control assets over the past week while the two countries work this out. That also appears to be linked to negotiations with Iran:
The IDF increased the pace of its strikes over the past two weeks, with the number of fatalities rising accordingly, before restricting them under a new policy, following a series of targeted killings across the Gaza Strip since the ceasefire took effect, which, according to IDF statistics, resulted in the deaths of around 500 terrorists.
Defense officials confirmed on Sunday that opportunities to strike Hamas's military wing operatives had been missed over the past week because of government policy. ...
Hamas's leadership, based in Qatar and Turkey, exerted pressure on Qatar, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and other countries, including the Board of Peace, which in turn pressured the White House to halt the targeted killings.
Officials in Jerusalem instructed the IDF to scale back the operations, but even this failed to satisfy the Americans, and the targeted killings were completely halted this week.
That's a smart move on Netanyahu's part. The IDF can afford to take a couple of weeks off as a concession to Trump without much risk. What Israel cannot afford to do is allow Hamas to keep its arms or to take over the "technocratic" government that the Board of Peace wants to establish in Gaza. The only military force with both the will and the capacity to enforce those terms is the IDF, so don't expect Netanyahu to Hokey Pokey his way out of Gaza beforehand.
