A White House official has said the US administration is not overly concerned by Benjamin Netanyahu’s rejection of Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan.
On Sunday the Israeli prime minister rejected the US-led 15-point plan, saying that no military pull-out would happen until Hamas was disarmed.
The US official told Channel 12 they thought Netanyahu’s rejection was a politically-motivated move in the run up to elections in October.
“We are not troubled by those comments from Netanyahu,” the senior US source told the channel.
“We understand his political needs [in this election period]. We have no problem with that, as long as he continues to do what we ask — especially as regards reining in the strikes in Gaza.”
Backing the plan for Gaza is the only way to stop another October 7 from happening, according to a key member of the Board of Peace.
Nickolay Mladenov, the Gaza envoy of the body backed by Washington, has said the plan was the “only way” to guarantee Israel’s security and move forward.
“Its goal is to make sure that Gaza is never again a threat to Israeli security,” Mladenov said in an interview with the country’s Channel 12 on Sunday.
“What happened on October 7 will never ever be allowed to happen, as long as we have a full implementation of the Board of Peace’s plan… The option that we are offering today is the only way that we move forward that guarantees that this tragedy will not occur again.”
Mladenov stressed that Israel was not expected to withdraw fully from the territory before Hamas is disarmed.
“Nobody is required to do anything – last of all Israel – before we actually have verified steps on the ground,” he said. “If there is verified decommissioning of weapons, that they are taken away from the factions, and stored, and ultimately rendered unusable, Israel then withdraws from Gaza.”
His comments came just hours after Netanyahu categorically rejected the board’s 15-point plan, insisting that there had to be “real disarmament, not fictitious disarmament” and that Hamas must give up its “heavy weapons, the less heavy weapons, all the weapons”.
Netanyahu also stopped a limited pullout of the IDF from small areas of southern Gaza which had previously been approved.
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