President Donald Trump’s highly-publicized Gaza peace deal is already unraveling – and it’s not Hamas tearing it apart, it’s Israel’s own top brass.
Just hours before Trump’s address to the Israeli Knesset on Monday, senior Israeli officials were blasting key parts of the agreement in public, signaling their outright defiance of the deal brokered by the U.S. president.
“Israel’s defense minister says the bombing will continue after they get their hostages back,” warned journalist Mehdi Hasan in a blunt post on Sunday. “Don’t say you weren’t warned.”
The deal, struck last week, was supposed to be a turning point. Hamas agreed to release all remaining Israeli hostages and cease hostilities. In exchange, Israel would gradually withdraw from Gaza and release 1,950 Palestinian prisoners – the majority of whom have never been charged with a crime.
But Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, has made it clear that he’s not on board with the full plan.
“Israel’s great challenge after the phase of returning the hostages will be the destruction of all of Hamas’s terror tunnels in Gaza,” Katz posted Sunday on X. He said this would be carried out “directly by the [Israel Defense Forces] and through the international mechanism to be established under the leadership and supervision of the United States.”
“I have instructed the IDF to prepare for carrying out the mission,” he added.
That position flies directly in the face of Trump’s ceasefire framework, which hinges on a mutual end to hostilities. Hamas, for its part, refuses to dismantle its underground tunnel network without full guarantees that Israel will stop its military operations.
“They don’t even bother hiding it,” wrote Humza Yousaf, former Scottish First Minister, on X. “Israel’s Defense Minister openly saying they intend to ignore Trump’s peace plan and bomb Gaza as soon as the hostages are returned. No doubt Israel will say they are targeting Hamas, just as they did when they killed 20,000 children in Gaza.”
Despite the successful release of the final living Israeli hostages early Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has yet to declare the war over – a key condition in Trump’s plan that would trigger the full Palestinian prisoner release and Israeli withdrawal.
While aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Trump was pressed on whether he still believed his deal had succeeded.
“Netanyahu has not gone so far as to say the war is over,” a reporter asked. “In your view, is the war between Israel and Hamas over?”
“The war is over!” Trump snapped back. “The war is over, the war is over! Do you understand that?”
But that declaration doesn’t seem to carry much weight in Jerusalem.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir have both slammed the peace plan and threatened political blowback against Netanyahu if Hamas is allowed to survive post-deal – even though the agreement gives Hamas amnesty if it disarms and plays no role in Gaza’s future government.
Bottom line: Trump showed up to Jerusalem with a peace deal in hand, hoping to claim a legacy-defining victory. But less than 24 hours later, Israel’s own leaders are signaling they never intended to stick to the script.
