What now as Israel rejects Trump’s 15-point plan for Gaza?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected United States President Donald Trump’s 15-point plan for Gaza, saying that Israeli forces will not withdraw until Hamas is “genuinely disarmed”.

“Israel rejects the 15-point document,” he said at a cabinet meeting, stressing that Hamas must give up all of its weapons before any pull-back.

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list 1 of 4Board of Peace says no Israeli withdrawal from Gaza before Hamas disarms
list 2 of 4Crews recover 19 bodies from rubble of destroyed Gaza building
list 3 of 4Palestinians in occupied West Bank hold firm on Indigenous Peoples’ Day
list 4 of 4Israel rejects Trump’s 15-point plan for Gaza

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Trump late last month announced a breakthrough in the US-led ceasefire framework, saying that Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza had accepted a phased plan under which they would surrender their weapons to a new Palestinian governing body, and Israel would begin pulling out troops in tandem with disarmament.

Netanyahu, under pressure from his right-wing base ahead of elections, has seemingly hardened his stance after days of mounting criticism of the plan.

So, what is Trump’s 15-point plan, and why has Israel rejected it?

What is Trump’s 15-point plan?

On July 30, the US-led Board of Peace proposed a 15-point roadmap for Gaza, detailing a phased, conditional framework for disarmament and reconstruction in the war-torn coastal enclave.

The plan mandates that Hamas disarm in exchange for a full Israeli military withdrawal and the transition of governance to an independent Palestinian National Committee, supported by an international security force.

The Board of Peace, created by Trump in October with him serving as its lifetime chair, is led by the US government. United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2803 designates it the body responsible for overseeing the Gaza peace plan.

Trump said the agreement would be implemented in stages, with Israeli forces withdrawing as the disarmament process advances.

Despite the framework, significant challenges remain, as Hamas hinges its compliance on an end to Israel’s genocidal actions.

A member of Hamas’s negotiating delegation last month told Al Jazeera that the group’s implementation of the agreement will be dependent on Israel fulfilling its commitments.

However, the Board of Peace earlier this week said an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza will only take place after the disarmament of Hamas is complete.

Israel has killed more than 73,300 Palestinians in Gaza since its genocidal war began in October 2023. And since agreeing to a US-mediated “ceasefire” with Hamas in ⁠⁠October 2025, it has continued ⁠⁠to carry out strikes on Gaza, killing more than 1,200 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

What did Netanyahu say while rejecting the deal?

The Israeli army “will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is genuinely disarmed and will continue to thwart threats against our forces and our citizens”, the Israeli prime minister said.

Netanyahu added that Israel was engaging with Washington over its concerns about the plan.

“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 said.

The Israeli leader, who is expected to face a tough national election in October this year, with successive surveys showing he is on course to lose, said that Hamas must give up all of its weapons.

“We are talking about real disarmament, not fictitious disarmament,” Netanyahu said.

Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from the occupied West Bank, said discussions around the 15-point plan, including Hamas’s disarmament and Israel’s potential withdrawal, “are extremely controversial for the [Netanyahu-led] right-wing government”.

“It seems that Netanyahu, so close to elections, has hit the reset button, saying that none of that will happen under his watch,” she said.

“This is extremely problematic for the Board of Peace and the mediators who have been working for months now to try to find a way to carry out the disarmament of Hamas and have Israel commit to a phased withdrawal from Gaza.”

How have Palestinians reacted?

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said most people in the war-battered coastal enclave “expected” Israel to reject the proposal.

“The only concern that people have right now is that this is translating into greater uncertainty,” he reported, adding that the plan “was meant to provide more structure and a framework”.

“There are important elements that were part of the plan in terms of security: Israeli withdrawal from the area that it has been occupying over the past years across Gaza known as the ‘Yellow Line’, the disarmament of Hamas, as well as the entry of international stabilisation forces. Now, the full rejection here puts the sequencing and the steps to complete that into serious question. It translates into no clear end to hostilities and wars.”

Political analyst and former adviser to the Palestinian negotiations team Xavier Abu Eid says the Board of Peace and UNSC Resolution 2803 were accepted late last year because it was argued at that time that they were the only way to end the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

“But it was very clear from the very beginning that the 20-point plan of President Trump and the 15-point disarmament and implementation plan that followed were more about meeting Israeli interests than the Palestinian right to self-determination,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Justice for Palestinians is something that nobody talks about. So, certainly, this remains a position,” he said, adding that Trump is unlikely to be happy with Netanyahu’s rejection.

“But at the same time, Trump has never even pretended to push any sort of accountability measures for Netanyahu violating even their own agreements,” the analyst said.

What do the experts say?

Israeli analyst Dan Perry said Netanyahu’s move against the proposed Gaza plan is “misaligned with what the people in Israel would generally want, if they understood correctly what’s going on”.

“I have no naivety about Hamas. But even if there is an idea that there is a declarative agreement to disarm, it is something that should be welcomed so clearly,” Perry, the former chief of The Associated Press news agency in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, told Al Jazeera.

“I keep hearing about a trade-off between Israeli security demands and the obvious needs of the Palestinian people, the need to alleviate and fix the humanitarian disaster in Gaza, but these are not at loggerheads.”

Much of Israeli society has backed the genocidal war on Gaza following the October 7 attack on southern Israel, as well as the war on Lebanon and Iran.

Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat, says Netanyahu needs “a forever war”.

“This Israeli rejection of the Gaza plan … should be viewed entirely in the context of the upcoming Israeli election on October 27,” he told Al Jazeera.

Pinkas said Netanyahu made a “calculation that this is risk free”, “that he can supposedly defy Trump because Trump doesn’t care enough, because of the sequence, because Hamas hasn’t disarmed yet, because he can get away with it”.

“And this is all about the forever war and the election,” he concluded.

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