News- Middle East: Benjamin Netanyahu says Israeli forces will remain in most parts of the Gaza Strip under US President Donald Trump’s plan, which demands Hamas’s submission while granting Tel Aviv full military backing.

The Israeli prime minister also reiterated his rejection of a Palestinian state, claiming that Trump’s 20-point proposal to end Israel’s war on Gaza makes no mention of such a provision.

In a video statement released on his Telegram channel on Tuesday, Netanyahu said that under the plan, Tel Aviv “will recover all our hostages, alive and well, while the (military) will remain in most of the Gaza Strip.”

He further said that Trump had pledged to give his regime “full backing to complete the military operation and eliminate Hamas” should the Palestinian resistance group refuse to accept the terms of the US proposal.

According to Qatari Foreign Ministry officials, Hamas received Trump’s plan from mediators late on Monday. They said the group’s negotiating delegation “promised to study it responsibly.” Sources close to Hamas said it “could take several days” to review.

A Palestinian official, speaking anonymously to Reuters, condemned the plan as “completely biased to Israel” and imposing “impossible conditions” designed to dismantle Hamas.

He added that Trump’s terms represent the wholesale adoption of Israeli demands, offering Palestinians no legitimate rights.

The plan, if implemented, would begin with an immediate cessation of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. It stipulates that existing “battle lines” be frozen until conditions are met for a staged Israeli withdrawal.

In exchange, Hamas would be required to lay down arms, while its tunnels and weapons production facilities would be destroyed.

Analysts say the Trump administration’s Gaza plan is designed less as a genuine path to peace and more as a political shield to legitimize Israel’s campaign of genocide in Gaza.

Yousef Munayyer, head of the Palestine-Israel program at the Arab Center in Washington, called the proposal “an attempt to create American-sponsored political cover for the continuation of genocide in Gaza, at a time when the entire world is rejecting that.”

Some Israeli officials have also raised concerns about the plan’s one-sidedness.

Knesset member Moshe Saada told Jewish News Syndicate that the proposal imposes conditions on Hamas that “we know it cannot do, such as releasing all the hostages without receiving anything in return and disarming.”

He argued that these stipulations would give Israel a green light to continue its war crimes against the Palestinians.

Source: Press TV