JERUSALEM/CAIRO—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu restated his rejection of U.S. President Donald Trump's latest Gaza plan in televised remarks to his government on Sunday, even as Israel's military has effectively halted attacks in the territory under U.S. pressure.
Israel has scaled back attacks in Gaza since Monday, when Nikolay Mladenov, the Gaza envoy for Trump's Board of Peace that oversees the Gaza ceasefire, met with Netanyahu.
Trump announced last month that there had been a breakthrough in his plan to end the war, to which both Israel and the Hamas terrorist group agreed, with Israeli forces withdrawing as Hamas disarms and an International Stabilization Force working with a new Palestinian police force to secure the enclave.
But Israel has said that Israeli troops in Gaza would not move before Hamas disarms. Hamas has insisted that Israel halt attacks before it begins implementing the part of the agreement dealing with its arms.
"Israel does not accept the 15-point document," Netanyahu said at the start of a meeting with cabinet ministers. The military "will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is disarmed ... it means heavy weaponry, lighter weaponry, all weaponry.
"And we are talking about genuine disarmament, not fictitious disarmament," he said, noting that Israel is in talks with the United States on the plan. Netanyahu made similar remarks in a social media post on Tuesday.
"They [the United States] have ideas, some of which are acceptable to us and some of which are unacceptable to us," Netanyahu said without elaborating.
Trump said last month that Iran-backed Hamas, which ruled Gaza for nearly two decades before carrying out the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war, had agreed to lay down its weapons.
Hamas avoids the use of the term "disarmament" and said the group agreed to hand over weapons to be stored under a U.S.-backed Palestinian technocrat administration that would run the affairs in Gaza under the supervision of Trump's Board of Peace.
Hamas said it agreed to the plan in order to spare the people in Gaza a possible resumption of war, but it added that the implementation of the deal would depend on Israel first meeting its own commitments, including withdrawal.
Since the U.S.-mediated agreement reached in October to end the war, Israel had vowed to hunt down every terrorist who had taken part in the October 2023 attack before stopping the targeted attacks on Monday.
More than 1,250 people have been killed in the Israeli attacks since the ceasefire, according to Gaza health officials. Hamas has not disclosed the number of its terrorists killed.