Is Israel really ready to withdraw from Gaza?

Published 1 August 2026 · world

United States President Donald Trump has been triumphal since the announcement that Palestinian group Hamas had agreed to hand over its weaponry in Gaza. But

United States President Donald Trump has been triumphal since the announcement that Palestinian group Hamas had agreed to hand over its weaponry in Gaza. But the terms of Thursday’s disarmament agreement also stipulate that Israel should withdraw from the Palestinian enclave, and gradually transfer power to a Palestinian administration – conditions that have been met with a frosty reception by Israeli politicians and in the Israeli press. The Israeli government has yet to officially comment, but one unnamed senior Israeli official told reporters on Friday that, despite “various publications” reporting “diplomatic progress in the Gaza Strip”, there would be no withdrawal from Israel’s current positions within Gaza before what it determines to be “the genuine disarmament of Hamas”. Trump, for his part, has said that Israel was “very happy” with the deal. Electoral suicide Many Israelis continue to espouse a hard line towards Palestinians in Gaza after the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel, which was launched from the territory. That is despite Israel subsequently conducting a genocidal war on Gaza, killing more than 73,000 Palestinians and destroying the enclave. A May poll found that 82 percent of Jewish Israeli respondents supported the forcible expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in Gaza – the same poll found that 56 percent of respondents supported the expulsion of Palestinian citizens of Israel from their homes too. Another poll, a month later, found that 64 percent of those surveyed believed there were “no innocents” among the Palestinians in Gaza. And many Israeli politicians – including government ministers – have said that illegal Jewish settlements, akin to the ones dividing the occupied West Bank, will soon come to Gaza.

The prospect, therefore, of an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and steps towards the enclave’s reconstruction are unpalatable to many Israelis, with politicians quick to condemn the disarmament agreement. Israel’s far-right Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir denounced it as “unacceptable”. “A commitment to stop the assassinations of [Hamas’s] murderers is tantamount to agreeing to Hamas organising for the next massacre,” Ben-Gvir wrote on social media. “The assassinations in Gaza must continue, the encouragement of emigration must happen. Israel must win.” The term “encouragement of emigration” is widely regarded as referring to ethnic cleansing. Politicians regarded as centrists, such as former chief of staff and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leading rival in the coming election, Gadi Eisenkot, were equally sceptical. He said that any deal that stopped short of the war’s objectives – the destruction of Hamas’s military-political power – was a total failure. “Nearly three years have passed since the morning of October 7,” Eisenkot wrote, “and Hamas has renewed its strength with a number of terrorists similar to the evening of October 6.” Politics of peace Netanyahu has yet to comment, but US-Israeli pollster and consultant Dahlia Scheindlin suggested the stakes are high for the prime minister with an election only a few months away. Netanyahu’s likely best chance of avoiding a jail sentence if he is found guilty of numerous corruption charges rests on him winning the October elections. But the opposition are currently leading in many polls, and may be able to gain enough seats to form a government. “Netanyahu’s considerations have nothing to do with public trauma [from the October 7 attack],” Scheindlin said, and everything to do with politics.