Israel has communicated “serious security concerns” to the White House regarding the proposed disarmament deal with Hamas, an Israeli official told the Associated Press on Sunday, marking the government’s first public comments since President Donald Trump announced the agreement. Doron Spielman, spokesperson for the Israeli Prime Minister’s office, said Israel’s intelligence assessment is that Hamas remains committed to rebuilding its military rather than genuinely demilitarising. He stated that the Israeli military, which controls more than 60% of Gaza, would not withdraw before Hamas disarms. “Disarming means physically giving up the weapons. Nothing less,” Spielman said.

Hamas has said it would begin disarming under the US-brokered ceasefire signed nine months ago, but the process is littered with obstacles. Trump’s 20-point plan calls for the group to surrender its weapons, destroy its tunnel network, and transfer arms held by Hamas-run police to a US-backed Palestinian technocratic committee upon its arrival in Gaza. A copy of the agreement obtained by the AP says decommissioning of heavy weapons and dismantling of military sites would begin only after that committee deploys and international forces arrive, linked to a phased Israeli withdrawal. Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas’s Political Bureau, told Arab media that the weapons issue is a Palestinian matter in which Israel will have no role, and that the group will fulfil its obligations only if Israel meets its commitments, pointing to an Israeli withdrawal.

Conflicting signals have clouded the deal’s prospects. A Palestinian source told Israel’s Kan News that “Hamas will not disarm. Period,” and that the group had begun distributing individual rifles to operatives to keep weapons under the guise of personal ownership. A separate Palestinian source affiliated with Israeli-backed militias told the Jerusalem Post that the agreement was “empty talk” and that Hamas, fearing retribution from clans it had oppressed, could not afford to disarm. Yet the Board of Peace has maintained that Hamas is committed to the deal, and the Saudi-owned Al-Hadath reported that Palestinian Islamic Jihad had also agreed to it. Iran’s Mehr News agency, in an editorial, described the disarmament push as a trap, arguing that the Palestinian resistance must insist on a full Israeli withdrawal before any negotiations.

Israel appears unlikely to make significant concessions ahead of its October elections, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu facing pressure from far-right coalition partners to maintain forces in Gaza and from opponents accusing him of failing to prevent the 7 October 2023 attack. Two people with knowledge of the deal told the AP that Israel had communicated its issues to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is part of the Trump-led Board of Peace, and that among the points Israel wanted was freedom to conduct military operations in Gaza. The next steps remain contingent: the arrival of the Palestinian committee and the deployment of international forces are prerequisites for the disarmament process to begin, but no timeline has been set.