Following the return to Israel on Monday of the final slain hostage, Ran Gvili, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump both said in separate statements that the Gaza ceasefire’s next challenge would be the disarmament of Hamas.

Hamas’s disarmament, meant to take place under the second stage of the truce, is broadly seen as one of the most difficult pieces of the plan for postwar Gaza laid out by Trump last year. But on Monday, both leaders drew a comparison between the quest to bring back all of the hostages, which was once seen as improbable, and the effort to disarm Hamas.

There is widespread skepticism in Israel that Hamas will agree to give up its weapons. The terror group has previously rejected the idea.

“The next phase [in Gaza] is not reconstruction,” Netanyahu said, speaking at a special Knesset session honoring Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama. “The next phase is disarming Hamas and the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip.”

He added that it was in Israel’s interest “to advance this phase, and not to delay it.” Then, repeating a warning he has made before, the prime minister said, “It will happen the easy way or the hard way. But it will happen.”

Later, speaking to a gaggle of reporters in a Knesset corridor, he chastised the media for its negativity on the next phase, and said there had also been doubts that Israel could return all of the hostages.

“Always doubting,........

© The Times of Israel