Israel is warning that Hamas is trying to turn President Donald Trump’s Gaza framework into another temporary truce that leaves the terror group alive, armed, and waiting for the next round.
Energy and Infrastructure Minister Eli Cohen said Saturday that Jerusalem opposes the Board of Peace’s 15-point Gaza roadmap “in its current form,” arguing that Hamas is preparing another deception.
Achieving a hudna, an Islamic concept of temporary ceasefire while Muslim forces regroup, would be an undeniable victory for Hamas. And the pattern for how it achieves this is by now entirely predictable. Hamas signals willingness to cooperate, offers partial concessions, secures a pause in Israeli pressure, and then uses the time to rebuild.
Israel has paid a heavy price in blood for letting the world pressure it into accepting these pauses as progress. No more, insisted Cohen in remarks to Channel 14, adding that “the era of the hudna is over.”
The dispute is not over whether Gaza should eventually be rebuilt or whether Israeli forces should remain there forever. Israel’s objection is to any plan that creates daylight between promises on paper and facts on the ground.
Hamas reportedly told mediators it is ready to begin implementing the next stage of the US-backed framework, provided Israel approves the move and begins carrying out its side. But Israeli officials say Hamas is already violating the existing ceasefire, including attempts to infiltrate across the Yellow Line, continued tunneling, and rearming.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel will not withdraw from its current positions in Gaza until Hamas is fully disarmed.
Symbolic handovers of some Hamas weapons won’t suffice. Nor will simply putting those weapons in Gaza warehouses under the ostensible oversight of a new Palestinian technocratic government. Hamas has overthrown a rival Palestinian government before, and given the chance will do so again.
Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon insisted that real disarmament means Hamas weapons are removed from Gaza entirely, beyond the group’s reach.
The ability of Trump’s Board of Peace to stand firm on that condition is the true test for any postwar arrangement in Gaza. If it fails, Gaza will inevitably fall back into a familiar cycle of terrorist exploitation and war with Israel.
For Israel’s part, the lesson of Oct. 7 is that I can no longer accept formulas that preserve Hamas, even in a weakened or more “moderate” form. Survival means a chance to one day rearm, and rearmament means the next massacre is just a matter of time.
Trump’s plan may still provide a framework for a different Gaza. But only if the international community understands what Israel already knows.
Hamas does not need another pause. It needs to be stripped of power and removed from the equation.
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