Hamas officially rejected the multinational Board of Peace’s mandate for the group to agree to complete disarmament on Tuesday, threatening a core principle of US President Donald Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan. The Board of Peace had set an April 14 deadline for Hamas to accept the phased disarmament plan. Meanwhile, on the ground in Gaza, Hamas and other Palestinians terrorists violated the current ceasefire agreement at least 14 times between April 8 and 16, according to Israeli military reports.
A Hamas delegation had traveled to Cairo days before the April 14 deadline, where Board of Peace High Representative Nickolay Mladenov presented the group with a phased disarmament plan. Hamas’s delegation refused, reportedly defining the terminology “disarmament” and “handing over weapons” differently. Hamas accused Mladenov of bias toward Israel while demanding that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) fully withdraw from Gaza before it would be willing to discuss disarmament. The “Yellow Line,” which divides Gaza between Israel and Hamas, is the agreed-upon boundary for the first phase of the peace plan.
Unlike other recent violations of the ceasefire agreement, the IDF asserted that Hamas has ramped up planned attacks against Israeli troops over the past week. The IDF struck a Hamas cell it said was “advancing terror plots against [Israeli] forces,” eliminating several terrorists, including Yosef Ibrahim Mahmoud Bishati. Bishati had previously participated in an attack that collapsed a building in Gaza on a group of IDF soldiers, killing 21 in the deadliest mass casualty event for the IDF since October 7, 2023.
The IDF also eliminated Mahmoud Barim, a member of the terror group Katayeb al Mujahideen, and Ahmed Muhammad Saleh, a member of Hamas’s elite Nukhba forces, in separate incidents. The IDF claimed that both men were planning distinct attacks on Israeli forces.
The IDF reported 12 additional Gaza ceasefire violations by Palestinian terrorists between April 8 and 16:
- On April 8, the IDF announced that “forces in the Southern Command attacked and eliminated earlier this week […] the terrorist Muhammad Dawwad,” who it described as a key explosives producer and engineer for Hamas.
- Later that day, the IDF said it had “identified and eliminated […] a suspected terrorist who crossed the yellow line” in northern Gaza.
- On April 9, the IDF killed Muhammad Samir Muhammad al Shawakh, who it described as “a key terrorist in the Hamas terror organization’s rocket and weaponry production headquarters, who planned to carry out terror attacks against IDF forces operating in [the] central Gaza Strip.” Shawakh had, according to the IDF, exploited his dual role as an Al Jazeera journalist to “advance terror activities […] and posed a real threat to the troops.”
- The same day, the IDF killed Abd al Rahman Ammar Hassan Khudari, along with three others who were Hamas terrorists, according to the IDF. Khudari had taken part in the October 7 massacre, raiding Kibbutz Nir Oz. The Israeli military also said that Khudari and the other individuals had “operated to advance a terror plot against IDF forces operating in northern Gaza.”
- On April 11, the IDF’s ‘Iron First’ Brigade “identified a terrorist who crossed the yellow line and approached the forces in a manner that posed an immediate threat.” The IDF killed the individual.
- On April 12, the IDF and Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency eliminated a Hamas terror cell it said “posed a threat to forces in the center of the Strip.” One member of the cell reportedly participated in the abduction of the deceased Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin.
- On April 13, the IDF’s 143rd Division identified and eliminated a group of armed Hamas members in the central Gaza Strip who reportedly posed an “immediate threat.”
- On April 14, the IDF’s Northern Brigade reportedly “identified a terrorist in the Yellow Line area who approached the forces operating in [the] northern Gaza Strip and posed a threat to them.” The Northern Brigade eliminated the individual.
- Later that day, the IDF said that its Southern Command spotted a pickup truck of armed Hamas members it deemed were “acting to advance terror plots in the immediate timeframe against IDF forces.” Israeli forces “attacked the armed terrorists with the aim of removing the real threat.”
- On April 15, the IDF said that it “identified a terrorist who crossed the yellow line and approached the forces in a manner that posed an immediate threat.” The Israeli military said that its “forces eliminated the terrorist.”
