President Donald Trump has been “unequivocal” that Hamas must fully disarm before his proposed peace framework can move forward, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday, demonstrating a hard U.S.-Israeli stance that leaves little room for compromise with the Iran-backed terrorist group.

Speaking to reporters ahead of Israel’s weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said Trump has made Hamas’ demilitarization a nonnegotiable condition of his 20-point peace plan.

“This is a necessary and fundamental condition for the implementation of his 20-point plan,” Netanyahu said. “He made no concessions on this and showed no flexibility on this matter.”

Netanyahu’s comments followed his visit last week to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, which he described as strengthening both the strategic alliance between Israel and the United States and the personal relationship between the two leaders. During that visit, Trump warned publicly that Hamas would be given only a “very short period of time” to demilitarize, adding that if it failed to do so “there will be hell to pay.”

While Trump said he wants to advance to the next phase of the plan “as quickly as we can,” he offered no timetable, leaving the pressure squarely on Hamas to comply or face escalation.

Netanyahu reinforced that message in a separate interview with Fox News, calling Hamas’ refusal to give up its weapons the single greatest obstacle to stabilizing Gaza in 2026. He said a different future for the territory remains possible, but only if Hamas is stripped of its military capabilities.

“If we disarm Hamas, whether with an international force or by any other means,” Netanyahu said, “then there’s a chance for a different future. If it can be done the easy way, fine. And if not, it’ll be done another way.”

According to Netanyahu, Hamas still fields roughly 20,000 operatives and controls an estimated 60,000 rifles, along with a vast underground tunnel network stretching hundreds of kilometers beneath Gaza.

“That’s what disarmament means,” he said. “You’ve got to take all these rifles away from them and break up those terror tunnels.”

Hamas leaders have flatly rejected such demands. On Dec. 6, senior Hamas figure Khaled Mashaal reiterated calls for Israel’s destruction and dismissed U.S.- and U.N.-backed efforts to demilitarize the Gaza Strip.

“The resistance and its weapons are the honor and pride of the ummah,” Mashaal said at an anti-Israel summit in Turkey. “A thousand statements are not worth a single projectile of iron.”

Events on the ground have further strained the fragile ceasefire. The IDF said it carried out a targeted strike over the weekend on a Hamas tunnel shaft in northern Gaza that contained a rocket launcher “loaded and ready” to fire at the Israeli city of Sderot, calling the activity a “blatant” violation of the truce.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said Sunday that Hamas is violating the ceasefire “every day” by refusing to return the remains of Israel Police Master Sgt. Ran Gvili, the last Israeli hostage whose body is still being held by the group after the Oct. 7 massacre. Under the ceasefire agreement, Hamas was required to return the remains of all 28 deceased hostages by Oct. 13, a deadline Israeli officials say the terrorist group has deliberately ignored.

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