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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says his troops are not moving off the lines they hold in Gaza until Hamas has given up every weapon, publicly breaking with the deal President Donald Trump announced last week.

Some shit you should know before you dig in: In case you missed it, last week Trump announced a deal negotiated by his Board of Peace, the body he created in January to oversee postwar Gaza. It took months to get Hamas to accept. The core of it is a trade. Hamas begins handing over its weapons, light arms, heavy weapons, and the tunnel network, while Israel immediately halts all military operations in Gaza and starts pulling back from the roughly 60% of the territory it currently controls. The withdrawal is meant to bring Israeli forces back to the Yellow Line, the demarcation they held under the October 2025 ceasefire before they expanded from 53% to more than 60%. From there, an International Stabilization Force moves in, and Gaza gets an independent Palestinian administration to run the place and handle the rebuild. None of it is new in principle. The whole thing hangs off the 20-point plan Trump put out to end the war, and Israel signed onto that one back in the fall.

netanyahu trump

What’s going on now: Netanyahu said he had not agreed to Trump’s deal, a public break with what Trump himself had described. In a video posted to social media, Netanyahu said, “President Trump thinks, or his team thinks, that they can get Hamas to disarm and demilitarize Gaza. We are looking into it. They sent us a draft. We did not agree to it. It was not our draft. We sent back our comments.”

He also said that Israeli forces would continue to “do whatever is necessary to protect themselves, our territory, and our citizens.” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich went further, calling the agreement “completely different” from what the government approved and demanding an immediate new vote.

Amid the confusion, the Board of Peace put out the following statement: “Contrary to inaccurate reports, we note that the withdrawal of the [Israeli military] beyond the Yellow Line will take place only once decommissioning is complete, as Hamas committed to the mediators. This applies to light weapons, heavy weapons, and the tunnels alike.”

This has now led Hamas to say it will not move unless Israel moves first. The group says phase two is still on as far as it and the other factions are concerned, and that it wants a straight answer from Board of Peace director Nickolay Mladenov and the mediators before anything else happens.

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