Israel has rejected the Board of Peace's 15-point roadmap for disarming Hamas, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying on Sunday that Israeli forces would not withdraw from any further territory in Gaza until the group has surrendered all of its weapons.
Speaking at a cabinet meeting, Mr Netanyahu ended more than a week of ambiguity over Israel's position on the plan, which President Donald Trump announced on 30 July as a "historic agreement for the complete disarmament of Hamas and all other groups in Gaza".
"I want to clarify this: Israel rejects the 15-point document. I have heard people saying, 'You didn't say that.' So here I am saying it again."
The prime minister said the military "will not make any withdrawal until Hamas is truly disarmed and will continue to thwart threats against our forces and citizens", adding: "And when I say disarm Hamas, that means heavy weapons, less-heavy weapons, all weapons. And we are talking about real disarmament, not a fictitious disarmament."
At the heart of the dispute is sequencing. The roadmap, drawn up by the Board of Peace to implement the 20-point plan agreed by Mr Trump and Mr Netanyahu in September 2025 and endorsed by the UN Security Council in Resolution 2803, ties the phased decommissioning of Hamas weaponry to a phased Israeli withdrawal, verified at each stage by an international committee. Mr Netanyahu is demanding full disarmament first.
The rejection concerns a document Hamas had already accepted. In a statement on Sunday, the group said it remained committed to the roadmap reached with mediators and the Board of Peace, saying its acceptance "despite all the challenges, reflected a sense of national responsibility upheld by the resistance factions". Basim Naeem, a senior official, said mediators and Washington should "exert pressure" on the Israeli government to abide by the roadmap and "prevent him from obstructing the process for domestic political and electoral considerations".
Mr Netanyahu also restated his opposition to Palestinian statehood — a goal the roadmap describes as a "credible pathway" the process is meant to create. "As long as I am prime minister, no Palestinian state will be established" he said. Of the American proposals, he said: "They have ideas, some of which are acceptable to us and some are not acceptable to us, and we know how to stand firm on these things."
The White House did not immediately comment. The plan has been repeatedly promoted by Mr Trump as a signature foreign policy achievement.
The rejection follows a week of escalating friction. Nickolay Mladenov, the board's high representative for Gaza, who said the agreement "took months of very difficult negotiations", met Mr Netanyahu in Jerusalem on 3 August and asked him to halt Israeli strikes, which killed at least 26 Palestinians over the previous weekend, according to Gaza's health ministry. On 4 August the board publicly hardened its own terms, stating that withdrawal beyond the so-called Yellow Line "will take place only once decommissioning is complete". Mr Netanyahu rejected the document regardless.
More than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023, according to the Gaza health ministry, including over 1,200 since the ceasefire took effect in October 2025. Israeli forces control more than 50% of the territory.
The timing is closely tied to Israel's general election on 27 October, the first since the war began, in which Mr Netanyahu faces pressure from far-right coalition partners opposed to any withdrawal.
The impasse also complicates matters for Britain. Sir Tony Blair sits on the board's founding executive, though the UK declined to join the body itself, with then Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper saying in January that its governing treaty "raises much broader issues" than the Israel–Hamas conflict.