Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is warning that Hamas is unlikely to honestly comply with the new Gaza roadmap, even as the international body overseeing the process says implementation of President Donald Trump’s broader peace plan has entered its most difficult stage.
The Board of Peace’s 15-point roadmap is meant to translate Trump’s Gaza plan into practical steps: ending military operations, transferring civilian rule to a Palestinian technocratic body, deploying an international stabilization force, gradually withdrawing Israeli troops, and beginning reconstruction.
But for Israel, the sequence is everything.
Netanyahu made clear this week that Gaza cannot be rebuilt while Hamas remains armed. Speaking with Israeli historian Gadi Taub, he dismissed the idea that the terror group would suddenly moderate.
“I don’t think Hamas is going to turn into a kitten,” Netanyahu said, calling it a predator that must still be dealt with.
His message was simple: Hamas must be disarmed, Gaza must be demilitarized, and only then can reconstruction begin.
That position reflects growing Israeli concern that the published roadmap could allow pressure for an IDF withdrawal before Hamas has actually surrendered its weapons. Israeli officials say that would repeat the central mistake of past Gaza arrangements by giving Hamas time, space, and legitimacy to rebuild.
The Board of Peace tried to calm those concerns after its high representative for Gaza, Nickolay Mladenov, met Netanyahu in Jerusalem. The board said Israel and the international body share the same ultimate goals, and stressed that an IDF withdrawal beyond the so-called Yellow Line would take place only after weapons decommissioning is completed.
Mladenov described the process soberly as “the start of the hard phase,” which he said would be “slow, grinding, and technical.”
Israel is worried that kind of diplomatic speak could again turn to ambiguity. Prime Minister’s Office spokesman Doron Spielman said Hamas has already used the ceasefire to rearm, recruit thousands of terrorists, and rebuild military infrastructure. Demilitarization, he emphasized, means Hamas physically handing over its weapons, and nothing short of that.
Netanyahu also renewed his call for Gazans who wish to leave the Strip to be allowed to do so voluntarily, accusing countries that refuse to accept them of caring more about preserving pressure on Israel than helping Palestinians.
The roadmap may yet become a framework for a post-Hamas Gaza. But Israel’s test is not the wording of another plan. It is whether Hamas is actually stripped of power, weapons, and the ability to carry out the next Oct. 7.
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