Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Sunday, 9 August 2026, that Israel has formally rejected US President Donald Trump's 15-point plan for Gaza, telling his cabinet that Israeli troops will not leave the territory until Hamas has been "genuinely" stripped of its weapons. The move marks a fresh setback for the Trump administration's ceasefire framework, which has struggled to move past disputes over the order in which disarmament and withdrawal should occur. According to Reuters, Netanyahu delivered the rejection in Jerusalem the same day.
Trump's so-called Board of Peace said last month that it had secured an agreement on the "complete disarmament" of Hamas and other armed factions in Gaza. Hamas, however, has maintained that surrendering its heavy weapons is conditional on Israel halting "all forms of aggression" and pulling its forces out of the territory. Israeli strikes on Gaza have continued despite the initial ceasefire reached in October last year.
"Israel rejects the 15-point document,"
Netanyahu told the cabinet, adding that the military would hold its ground.
The Israeli military "will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is genuinely disarmed and will continue to thwart threats against our forces and our citizens."
Netanyahu said Israel remains in contact with Washington over its objections to the document. "They have ideas; some of them are acceptable to us and some are not, and we know how to stand our ground on these matters," he told the cabinet. He also drew a sharp distinction between the disarmament Israel is demanding and what he characterised as a token gesture: "We are talking about real disarmament, not fictitious disarmament."
What is the core disagreement between Israel and Hamas?
The dispute centers on sequencing: Hamas insists Israeli forces must withdraw before it lays down its weapons, while Netanyahu says disarmament must come first and has dismissed any partial gesture as a "fictitious disarmament." A Hamas source said the group's heavy weapons would be placed under Palestinian administration rather than handed over to Israeli forces, and Hamas has generally avoided the word "disarmament" altogether, saying instead that it agreed to hand weapons over to the US-backed National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) under the supervision of the Board of Peace. Israel's objections centre on the plan failing to meet its demand for the complete disarmament and demilitarisation of Gaza.
Notably, sourcing on the proposal's exact scope varies: the plan is described in some reporting, including our own, as a "15-point" document, while other accounts of the same framework refer to it as a "14-point plan" posted by the Board of Peace. Under that plan, Israel, Hamas and other Palestinian factions would halt all military operations, and an International Verification Committee (IVC) would be set up. It sets out a 14-day period after all parties accept the roadmap for a timetable and implementation mechanisms to be finalised. Control of Gaza would then pass to the NCAG, a panel of Palestinian professionals established by the Board of Peace in January that has reportedly been waiting in Cairo since then to take over administrative functions, backed by a new police force and an international stabilisation force. Disarmament under the plan is meant to be "gradual, sequential and time-bound" and linked to a phased Israeli withdrawal — the very sequencing Netanyahu has rejected.
A Hamas political bureau member, Bassem Naim, said the group expects outside pressure on Israel to comply. "We expect the mediators and the American guarantor to pressure Netanyahu and his government to adhere to the roadmap and not obstruct the process for internal political and electoral reasons," Naim said.
Separately, according to India Today, Israeli officials had already signalled their rejection of the plan before Netanyahu's public statement, saying there would be "no withdrawal whatsoever" until Hamas underwent what Israel considers genuine disarmament. The outlet also reported that the plan envisions handing Gaza's governance to a Palestinian technocratic body once disarmament and withdrawal are complete.
How has Netanyahu's stance been received politically?
Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich praised Netanyahu's rejection of the plan. "We went to war with a central goal: the destruction of Hamas," Smotrich said in a statement, adding that Israeli forces "cannot withdraw even a millimetre from the Gaza Strip" and that reconstruction cannot begin "before the complete dismantling and demobilization of Hamas." At the same cabinet meeting, Netanyahu also reiterated a broader regional red line, vowing that Iran would not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons regardless of diplomatic developments: "With an agreement or without an agreement, as long as I am prime minister, [Iran] will not have nuclear weapons," he said. Both Israel and the United States have said stopping Iran's nuclear programme is a goal of their earlier conflict with Tehran, though Iran has consistently maintained its nuclear activities are peaceful.
How does this fit into the wider ceasefire push?
Trump described the original agreement last month as a deal on Hamas disarmament brokered through his Board of Peace, though it remained unclear at the time whether either side had actually signed on. Within days, regional tensions escalated further as Iran targeted a US base in Kuwait even as Trump insisted a Gaza deal had been reached. Shortly after Hamas said it had accepted a disarmament framework, at least eight people were killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza, underscoring how fragile the arrangement has been from the outset.
Netanyahu's hard line also echoes his stance in the region more broadly. He had earlier ruled out an immediate Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon after declaring victory over Iran, a position that drew domestic political criticism at the time, and it later contributed to a broader political crisis over the direction of Israel's security policy following the US-Iran ceasefire.
Additional reporting from JTA notes that a so-called "Yellow Line" currently demarcates areas held by Hamas and Israel, with Israeli forces still controlling just over half of Gaza's territory. Coverage from the New York Times similarly describes the plan as pairing Hamas's disarmament with a phased Israeli pullback, while the Washington Post frames the proposal in similar terms, describing it as an arrangement in which Hamas would lay down weapons in exchange for an eventual Israeli exit from Gaza.
What happens next?
Senior Israeli military officials are expected to present their conditions for the plan to Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir during discussions scheduled for Wednesday, according to Yeni Safak. Netanyahu said he is currently in talks with US officials on how to proceed, signalling that further negotiations are imminent. According to the New York Times, the original 15-point agreement allotted the parties a two-week window to determine an implementation schedule, a window that can reportedly be extended if talks continue. With Israeli elections just months away, analysts note that the prime minister has little political incentive to make concessions in the near term.
Key Facts
- Netanyahu rejected Trump's 15-point Gaza plan at a cabinet meeting on 9 August 2026, a rejection confirmed the same day by Reuters.
- Israel says troops will not withdraw until Hamas undergoes "genuine" disarmament; Netanyahu called partial steps "fictitious disarmament."
- Hamas says it will not disarm before an Israeli withdrawal, and that heavy weapons would go to the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza rather than to Israel.
- Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich praised the rejection, saying Israeli forces cannot withdraw "even a millimetre" from Gaza.
- Israeli military officials are due to present their conditions to Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir on Wednesday, and the original plan allowed a two-week window for an implementation schedule.
- Israel currently controls just over half of Gaza, divided by the so-called "Yellow Line."
