Israel has shared “serious security concerns” with the White House regarding the proposed disarmament deal with Hamas, an Israeli official said as Israeli strikes overnight and into Sunday evening killed at least 17 people, including children, in Gaza.
The remarks by Doron Spielman, spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, were some of the first public comments since US President Donald Trump announced the agreement.
Spielman told The Associated Press that Israel’s intelligence assessment is that Hamas remains committed to rebuilding its military rather than genuinely demilitarising. He said the Israeli military would not withdraw from Gaza — where it controls more than 60% of the territory — before Hamas disarms.
“Our assessment is that if we redeploy before Hamas is truly disarmed, it will quickly expand its presence throughout Gaza, rebuild its terrorist infrastructure, once again threaten Israeli communities, and seek to carry out another Oct. 7-style attack,” he said, referring to the Hamas militant attack on Israel in 2023 that triggered the war in the Gaza Strip.
“Disarming means physically giving up the weapons. Nothing less,” Spielman said.
His comments come days after Hamas said that it would begin disarming as part of the US-brokered ceasefire signed nine months ago to end the nearly three-year-long conflict. It marks a potential breakthrough in ending the conflict, but many hurdles, conditions and long timelines remain.
Trump’s 20-point ceasefire plan calls on Hamas to surrender its weapons and destroy its vast network of tunnels. It also envisions Israeli forces withdrawing from Gaza, the arrival of a new technocratic Palestinian government, deployment of an international security force and the rebuilding of the battered Palestinian enclave.
Hamas disarming has been a sticking point and has deadlocked negotiations for months. In announcing the deal on social media on Thursday, Trump said it would be carried out in “carefully structured phases.”
A copy of the agreement obtained and verified by the AP said that all weapons held by the Hamas-run police will be transferred to the US-backed Palestinian technocratic committee, known as the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, upon its arrival in the enclave. It’s not clear when that would happen since it is contingent on other steps.
A process to decommission and store heavy weapons and to dismantle military production sites and tunnels will begin after the arrival of the Palestinian committee and the deployment of international forces. The process will be linked to a phased Israeli withdrawal, according to the agreement.
The areas Israel controls in Gaza have been mostly destroyed and depopulated. Most of the territory’s 2 million Palestinians are in the other part, where hundreds of thousands live in squalid tent camps and destroyed neighbourhoods.
