Netanyahu rejects Trump’s Gaza plan, testing US influence in the region

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rejection of Donald Trump’s 15-point plan for Gaza has created a rare public divide between the two leaders. More importantly, it has raised a broader question: if Trump is unwilling or unable to pressure Netanyahu, can his administration deliver the regional stability it has promised?

Netanyahu declared on Sunday that Israel would not accept the US-backed proposal, which seeks to match Hamas’s disarmament with a phased Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. “I want to be precise here: Israel rejects the 15-point document,” Netanyahu said. The Israel Defence Forces, he added, would “not withdraw at all until Hamas is genuinely disarmed”.

Netanyahu defined genuine disarmament as the removal of Hamas’s heavy and light weapons, insisting that Israel would not accept a merely symbolic process. The comments were his clearest rejection yet of the roadmap developed by Trump’s Board of Peace. Netanyahu’s office had previously expressed reservations, saying the published version did not reflect Israel’s position, but the Prime Minister had stopped short of publicly dismissing it.

Under the plan, Hamas would relinquish its weapons in return for a staged Israeli withdrawal. Authority in Gaza would eventually be transferred to an independent Palestinian National Committee, supervised by the Board of Peace, while an international stabilisation force would provide security.

The sequence is the central point of disagreement. The American proposal envisages reciprocal and verified steps, with Hamas’s disarmament and Israel’s withdrawal progressing in stages. Netanyahu is demanding that Hamas be completely disarmed before the IDF withdraws.