Hamas says it remains committed to a Gaza peace deal backed by the United States after envoy Jared Kushner spoke to Israel about pressuring the terror group on disarmament.
“Hamas is committed to this agreed-upon process. It is clear that, so far, the Israeli side has not given the mediators clear approval of the roadmap,” Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem tells AFP.
The Board of Peace is considering abandoning its phased framework for Hamas’s disarmament amid Israeli pushback to the US-controlled body’s original plan, a source directly familiar with the negotiations told The Times of Israel on Monday.
While the shift to a wholesale framework could be enough to get Israel on board, it risks losing the support of Hamas, after the Board of Peace spent months coaxing the terror group to accept the phased disarmament plan.
That original disarmament roadmap, approved by Hamas on July 30, broke the roughly 47 percent of the Gaza Strip still controlled by Hamas into five sectors and envisioned each sector being demilitarized successively, the source said.
Jacob Magid and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
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