Israel “rejects” the latest American road map, accepted by Hamas and supposed to launch the second stage of the peace plan in Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Sunday, conditioning any withdrawal of its troops on a “real” disarmament of Hamas.
The Prime Minister, who had expressed his reluctance on this text in recent days, explicitly announced his rejection while he is facing strong opposition from his far-right allies, a few months before delicate legislative elections.
Hamas immediately called on the Americans to put pressure on Mr. Netanyahu and his government, “so that they respect the road map and do not hinder the process for reasons of domestic or electoral politics,” one of its officials told AFP
“Israel rejects the 15-point document” presented at the end of July by Donald Trump’s “Peace Council”, and its army “will not carry out any withdrawal (from Palestinian territory) until Hamas is truly disarmed”, declared the Prime Minister during a cabinet meeting.
The Palestinian Islamist movement had accepted this plan, which, in its version published by the “Peace Council”, links its disarmament to a gradual withdrawal of Israeli troops. He reiterated on Saturday that he was ready to implement it, already calling for American pressure in this direction.
Faced with Israeli concerns and following a meeting on Monday with Benjamin Netanyahu, the high representative of the “Peace Council” for Gaza, Nikolai Mladenov, assured him that Israel would only withdraw after “complete” disarmament of Hamas. But this was not enough to rally the Israeli side.
The text also stipulates that the disarmament of Hamas and the storage of its arsenal will be ensured by the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), a Palestinian technocratic body responsible for managing the territory in a transitional phase, currently blocked in Egypt by the Israeli refusal to let it enter.
The Palestinian Islamist movement has long defended gradual disarmament, rather than a unilateral surrender of its arsenal.
Benjamin Netanyahu reported discussions with the United States over Israeli objections. “They have ideas; some suit us and others not, and we know how to defend our positions on these issues,” he declared. He insisted on the need for Hamas to give up all its weapons: “we are talking about real disarmament, not fictitious disarmament.”
