Palestine weekly: Netanyahu hedges on Gaza roadmap

Published 11 August 2026 · politics

Israel has rejected the 15-point Gaza roadmap put forward by US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday

Israel has rejected the 15-point Gaza roadmap put forward by US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday, insisting that the Israeli army would not withdraw from the Palestinian territory until Hamas is fully disarmed. Hamas reaffirmed its own commitment to the roadmap on the same day, demanding guarantees on the ceasefire, Israeli withdrawal, aid and reconstruction. Board of Peace envoy Nickolay Mladenov said in an interview on Israel’s Channel 12 that any Israeli pullback would come incrementally from areas declared free of weapons, with international forces taking over ground Israel vacates, and that disarmament would ultimately extend to all armed groups in Gaza, not Hamas alone. Gaza: a public no, a quiet maybe Israel’s rejection of the plan was nonetheless accompanied by discernible changes on the ground. The reported number of Palestinians killed in Gaza dropped sharply, from 47 between July 27 and August 3 – which includes the days immediately after Trump’s initial disarmament agreement announcement – to eight in the following week through August 10, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Israeli Army Radio reported that Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz had secretly approved rehabilitation work to rebuild basic infrastructure in eastern Rafah, with Palestinian labourers to be allowed onto the site after screening by Shin Bet, Israel’s security agency. The project, however, underpins the “Green Rafah” temporary-housing initiative. Experts fear that far from being genuine humanitarian relief, the construction will further entrench Israel’s military within Gaza and cement its fragmentation. Israel has reportedly held back caravans needed to house residents there until after its October election, despite the October 2025 “ceasefire” agreement. Yet media outlets, citing US officials, reported that the Israeli army has received no order to freeze preparations for the agreement’s second phase, with a first base for the incoming International Stabilization Force reportedly planned to begin construction in Rafah by the end of August.

Netanyahu is facing competing pressure from his US allies to proceed towards the second phase, and from his far-right political allies to seize and even colonise more of Gaza as elections near. Despite the de-escalation in attacks, violence continued in the besieged Gaza Strip. Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian man in Deir el-Balah on Saturday. At least five more Palestinians were wounded in the territory, including in an Israeli tank strike on tents in Khan Younis and gunfire in al-Mawasi and Gaza City. Since October’s “ceasefire”, at least 1,258 Palestinians have been killed and 4,139 wounded, while 807 bodies were recovered from rubble as of August 10. Since October 2023, when Israel began its genocidal war on Gaza, 73,386 Palestinians have been killed and 174,250 wounded, Gaza’s Health Ministry said. Gaza also held one of its largest mass funerals of the war for 112 members of the Abu Sharia and al-Hasayna families, killed in a November 2023 strike. Their remains were only recovered last week. More than 150 people from the same attack are still missing. On Saturday, crews recovered 19 more bodies, mostly women and children, from a single collapsed building after four days of manual digging, with Israel continuing to bar heavy machinery from entering Gaza. Gaza’s Health Ministry says more than 8,000 people remain missing under rubble across the Strip. A satellite assessment by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) found that 82 percent of all structures in Gaza – more than 201,000 buildings – were still damaged or destroyed as of mid-June. West Bank: a camp under siege Amid a series of raids across the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces launched a major, multi-day operation in Qalandiya refugee camp and neighbouring Kafr Aqab, north of occupied East Jerusalem.