President Donald Trump has been "unequivocal," both in private and in public, that Hamas needs to disarm as a condition for his 20-point peace plan to proceed, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.

"This is a necessary and fundamental condition for the implementation of his 20-point plan. He made no concessions on this and showed no flexibility on this matter," Netanyahu stated, addressing journalists ahead of the weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday.

Netanyahu's visit last week to Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, contributed to "deepening the dual relationship — between Israel and the United States, and of course the personal bond," he added.

During the visit, Trump told journalists that Hamas would be allowed a "very short period of time" to demilitarize or "there will be hell to pay for them." While the president said he wants to move to Phase 2 "as quickly as we can," he stopped short of offering any concrete timeline.

The prime minister said on Sunday it was "very moving for my wife and me to stand alongside the president and his wife and celebrate the entry of the new year, which we hope will be even better than the past year.

"President Trump asked me: 'Tell me, do you like fireworks?' I told him: 'It's preferable to other things that explode in the sky, but with that too we have learned to deal very well.' Of course, he understood."

Netanyahu told Fox News last week that progress toward the next phase hinges on Hamas disarming, calling the terrorist group's refusal to give up its weapons the central obstacle to stabilizing the territory in 2026.

The prime minister told Fox that he believed a different future for Gaza was still possible in the year ahead "if we disarm Hamas, whether with an international force or by any other means." He added, "If it can be done the easy way, fine. And if not, it'll be done another way."

The Palestinian terrorist organization still has around 20,000 operatives and 60,000 rifles, Netanyahu revealed.

"That's what disarmament means — got to take all these rifles, take them away from them, and break up those terror tunnels that they have, still hundreds of kilometers of terror tunnels," the premier told Fox News.

Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal on Dec. 6 repeated calls for the Jewish state's destruction, rejecting U.S.- and U.N.-backed demands to disarm the Iranian-supported terrorist group and demilitarize the Gaza Strip.

"The resistance and its weapons are the honor and pride of the ummah [the Islamic nation]," Mashaal told an anti-Israel summit in Turkey. "A thousand statements are not worth a single projectile of iron."

The IDF on Saturday carried out a precise strike on a Hamas tunnel shaft in the northern Gaza Strip containing a rocket launcher "loaded and ready to be launched toward the city of Sderot," the military said. It added that the terror group's action was a "blatant" truce violation.

Meanwhile, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that Hamas was violating the ceasefire "every day" by refusing to return the remains of Israel Police Master Sgt. Ran Gvili, the last remaining hostage, whose body was taken after fighting terrorists during the Oct. 7 massacre.

The Palestinian terrorist organization slow-walked the release of the hostages' remains, despite being obligated to return all 28 bodies on Oct. 13 in accordance with the ceasefire agreement it agreed to.

This JNS.org report was republished with permission from Jewish News Syndicate.