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DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza City — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that Israeli forces will not withdraw from their current lines in Gaza until Hamas has completely disarmed.

In remarks on social media, Netanyahu suggested there were differences between Israel and the Trump administration over a recent deal announced to disarm the militant group.

The agreement called for Hamas to begin disarming and for Israel to halt its strikes and begin withdrawing from Gaza. It was part of an October ceasefire agreement that ended major military operations but has stalled on other fronts. Netanyahu instead said disarmament should come first, and that Israeli forces would continue to “do whatever is necessary to protect themselves, our territory, and our citizens.”

The Trump administration “sent us a draft. We did not agree. It is not our draft. We sent our comments,” Netanyahu said. “This is our position. We stand firm on our interests, I believe both wisely and resolutely.”

Earlier on Tuesday, Palestinians gathered for a mass funeral of more than 100 bodies finally recovered from a deadly Israeli strike in Gaza in 2023. More than 300 people were killed on Nov. 22, 2023, weeks into the war with Hamas, when warplanes flattened a residential block in Gaza City’s Sabra neighborhood.

Around 40 bodies were recovered soon afterward in a frantic scramble of rough tools and bare hands, but most were buried deep beneath the rubble. Reports of the high number of victims in one of the war’s deadliest attacks took days to reach the public in the chaos just before its first ceasefire.

Over the weekend, first responders dug through the destroyed buildings and recovered remains of 112 victims, including 40 children, according to the Civil Defense, a rescue agency operating under the Hamas-run Interior Ministry.

It said 157 bodies still have not been found.

“The only crime of these martyrs was that they remained steadfast and resilient in their homes, believing that these homes would protect them,” one relative, Taysir al-Hassayna, told the Associated Press following the funeral prayers.

For the missing, it’s “as if their bodies had evaporated without a trace.”

The current ceasefire has allowed recovery of remains

Only now are some bodies of people killed in the war’s ferocious early months slowly being recovered, as a fragile ceasefire that took effect in October allows such efforts to push ahead in parts of devastated Gaza.

Those discoveries have contributed to the war’s rising toll. The Hamas-led militant attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killed around 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 73,377 Palestinians, including since the ceasefire, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.

At least 7,400 people have been reported by relatives to still be under the rubble, Zaher al-Waheidi, head of the ministry’s records department, told the AP. The true number is likely thousands higher because in some cases entire families were killed in a single bombing, leaving no one to report the missing, al-Waheidi has said.

The people mourned on Tuesday were from a residential block belonging to the Hassayna and Abu Sharia clan, and many were related. The Associated Press has identified at least 60 families across Gaza who lost 25 or more family members during the first three months of war.

On Tuesday, the remains of the victims, wrapped in Palestinian flags, were laid in rows on the ground. Many were marked with photos, and flower petals were scattered around all. Hundreds of people surrounded the bodies for funeral prayers, some standing on the rubble.

Following the prayers, people carried the bodies on stretchers along a narrow street lined by destroyed buildings and buried them in a nearby cemetery.

Gaza is struggling to rebuild amid ceasefire violations

The ceasefire halted much of the fighting, but at least 1,252 people have been killed in Gaza since it took effect, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. The ministry, part of the Hamas-led government, maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. It does not give a breakdown of civilians and militants but says women and children make up most of the dead.

Israel says its strikes are against militants who endanger its soldiers, took part in the Oct. 7 attack, or carry out other violations. Five Israeli soldiers have been killed since the ceasefire.

Gaza remains largely shattered. Most of its 2 million Palestinians are displaced, many living in tent camps where poor conditions and overcrowding have led to rodent infestations and outbreaks of infectious diseases such as chickenpox.

Each side has accused the other of violating the ceasefire, and negotiations on further steps have largely stalled. Hamas has held onto its weapons, despite agreements to disarm, and the Israeli military has refused to withdraw and controls over half the territory.

The Board of Peace official overseeing Gaza’s postwar transition, Nikolay Mladenov, on Monday met with Netanyahu, in part to discuss a new disarmament deal the U.S.-created board has reached with Hamas.

Last week, President Donald Trump announced an agreement that calls for Israel to cease its military operations in Gaza and for Hamas and its allies there to halt all militant activity. After the text of the agreement was released, Israel said it had “serious security concerns.”

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s proposed 250-foot-tall memorial arch could disrupt the historical significance of dozens of sites near its planned location, according to an assessment by the National Park Service.

Many of Washington’s monuments, buildings, and sites have been carefully planned over the decades to reflect significant moments in the nation’s history and evoke symbolism in being connected by sightline to other sites.

The proposed towering gilded arch, which last month received initial approval from a key federal commission, would impact the “integrity” of dozens of those historical properties because it would change “character-defining visual and spatial relationships” between them.

The NPS report, published Monday, said the immediate project area is located within the Memorial Avenue Corridor cultural landscape, “a nationally significant historic designed landscape extending between the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.”

One of the most obvious elements the report cited is that the arch would break alignment between the Lincoln Memorial, Memorial Bridge, and Arlington House that was formerly Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s home.

“The bridge alignment and associated ceremonial landscape were intended to physically and symbolically unite North and South through a coordinated monumental composition extending across the Potomac River,” the report said.

The report puts a snag in a project that has sailed through several steps of the approval process in front of planning bodies stocked with Trump appointees and allies.

The proposed arch is one of several projects the Republican president is pursuing to leave his lasting imprint on Washington. With the potential to change the city’s sightlines, it has already sparked opposition, including through a lawsuit filed by a group of veterans and a historian.

The arch design, proposed by Trump, has already received early approval from the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. The commissioners were all appointed by Trump. The National Capital Area Planning Commission approved the site and preliminary plans at its July meeting. The commission is expected to take up the matter again at its September meeting.

The arch is one of several projects Trump has proposed that are involved in litigation. The plaintiffs, three veterans and a historian, have challenged its construction, saying it requires Congressional approval.

“Our claim is essentially that none of this has any authorization to be happening in the first place,” said Nicolas Sansone, an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group representing the plaintiffs. Authorization of the construction of a monument “in the core of Washington, D.C., on National Park Service land” requires an act of Congress, he said.

The National Park Service assessment confirms what the plaintiffs have said the construction will do to the symbolic and solemn area, he added.

“I think it’s very significant that the National Park Service itself understands that this is the effect that it’s going to have,” Sansone said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.