The US-backed Board of Peace has defended its Gaza roadmap as “the only way forward” after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the 15-point framework and ruled out any immediate military withdrawal.

“The option that we are offering today is the only way that we move forward,” Nickolay Mladenov, the board’s High Representative for Gaza, told Israel’s Channel 12 on 9 August. He said full, verified implementation was intended to prevent a repeat of the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

Mladenov said Israel would not be asked to withdraw from its current positions along the Yellow Line before tangible steps were taken to remove weapons from Palestinian factions.

Israeli forces would then pull back sector by sector after weapons in each area were collected, placed under the control of the Palestinian National Committee for the Administration of Gaza and rendered unusable, he said.

Mladenov described the proposed arrangement as being based on verification rather than trust. Progress would stop if commitments were not met, while Israel would retain the ability to respond to what it considered imminent threats against its troops.

The roadmap published by the Board of Peace on 30 July calls for heavy weapons, military production sites, weapons depots and tunnels to be decommissioned after the remaining commitments under the Sharm el-Sheikh protocol are completed and Palestinian administrators and an international stabilisation force enter Gaza.

It links verified decommissioning to a phased Israeli withdrawal without setting fixed dates. Under its terms, only the Palestinian administrative committee would be permitted to control or store weapons when the process was complete.

Netanyahu told his cabinet on 9 August that “Israel does not accept the 15-point document”. He said Israeli forces would not withdraw until Hamas had undergone what he called genuine disarmament, covering heavy and light weapons.

The distinction is central to the dispute. Netanyahu is demanding territory-wide disarmament before any withdrawal, while Mladenov described a progressive pullback after weapons are removed and verified in individual areas.

Mladenov said the current commitment to the roadmap involved the United States, Hamas and the Board of Peace, but not Israel. Netanyahu said discussions with Washington were continuing and that some US proposals were acceptable while others were not.

Israel reduced its attacks in Gaza after Netanyahu met Mladenov on 3 August, Reuters reported. A source familiar with the Israeli position said the military had agreed to act only against what it regarded as direct threats and to suspend the targeted killings it had previously conducted almost daily.

Senior Hamas official Basem Naim told Reuters that the movement remained committed to a roadmap agreed with mediators in Cairo. He called on the mediators and Washington to press Netanyahu not to obstruct it for domestic political reasons.

Hamas has avoided describing the process as disarmament, saying factional weapons would be stored under the Palestinian committee’s authority rather than surrendered to Israel. It has also said implementation depends on Israel first meeting its commitments, including withdrawal and ending attacks.

Channel 12 later quoted an unnamed senior US source as saying Washington regarded Netanyahu’s rejection as election rhetoric and was not concerned provided Israel continued to restrain its attacks. Mladenov said further discussions were under way.