Netanyahu Rejected a Draft the Board of Peace Had Already Rewritten in His Favour
On Tuesday evening the prime minister told Facebook that Israel never agreed to the disarmament text it was sent. A day earlier the body chairing the plan had conceded the exact sequencing he was demanding.
Netanyahu posted a video to his Facebook account on Tuesday 4 August saying Israeli forces “are not withdrawing from the current lines in Gaza until Hamas is completely disarmed,” and adding: “They sent us a draft. We didn’t agree. It wasn’t our draft.” On the Trump plan itself he said: “Trump thinks, and his team thinks, that Hamas can be totally disarmed and Gaza demilitarised — we’re looking into it.” The Times of Israel carried the video in its 4 August liveblog; Middle East Eye relayed it citing ToI; the Associated Press moved it independently, datelined Deir al-Balah and Gaza City, framing it as a rare open display of friction with Washington. Per AP, the agreement called for Hamas to begin disarming and for Israel to halt strikes and begin withdrawing from the roughly 60 percent of Gaza it holds.
The Times of Israel’s own framing points somewhere else. Its liveblog says Netanyahu was answering “reports that Israel is giving in to Hamas and withdrawing from the lines” — an accusation from his right, not from the Board of Peace. And on Monday 3 August the Board of Peace, the Resolution 2803 body chaired by Trump with Nickolay Mladenov as High Representative, had already said Israel would pull back only after Hamas’s weapons were decommissioned. Haaretz’s Liza Rozovsky, filing at 21:03 IDT, described that as a retreat from a plan announced the previous week under which both moves were to be simultaneous and gradual; Al Jazeera reported the same on 4 August. The “reversal” characterisation is Haaretz’s and Al Jazeera’s, not the Board’s. An unnamed Board official told i24NEWS: “We are not getting involved in internal Israeli politics. We are concentrating on implementation.”
Israel’s right pressed anyway. Per i24NEWS, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Minister Orit Strock wrote to Netanyahu urging him to halt deployment of the proposed International Stabilization Force, arguing the roadmap presented publicly differed from the version the cabinet approved. The Board of Peace rejected the criticism. The letter’s text has not been published. Also on 3 August, Qatar, Egypt and Türkiye issued a joint statement from Doha on what they titled “the Ongoing Israeli Violations in Gaza,” urging the international community to press Israel to fulfil its commitments and finalise the Trump plan, and calling decisive international action critical to securing a permanent ceasefire.
Assessment: Two newsrooms read the same video and reached opposite subjects. AP made it about Trump; the Times of Israel made it about Smotrich. The Israeli read is the better one, because by Monday the sequencing fight was already settled Netanyahu’s way — which means Tuesday’s refusal cost him nothing abroad and bought him something at home. Note also what cannot be checked: no party has published the draft, so “we didn’t agree” is unfalsifiable in exactly the way this week’s other undocumented agreement is. Treat “reversal” as a reporter’s judgement and the anonymous i24 official as one partisan outlet’s single source.