Senior Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk said Wednesday that Hamas never agreed to disarm, casting doubt on whether the terror group will fulfil a key US and Israeli demand included in the American-backed plan for postwar Gaza.
Abu Marzouk’s statement runs contrary to the insistence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump that the terror group give up its weapons in the near future as part of the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire. Trump has repeatedly asserted that Hamas “promised” to lay down its arms, and has threatened the group over the issue.
Abu Marzouk also suggested Hamas has a de facto veto on any appointment to the new technocratic committee set up to run the Gaza Strip, and stressed that Hamas still rules over the part of the enclave that, in accordance with the ceasefire, is not under IDF control.
The comments came during an interview with Al Jazeera amid efforts to execute phase two of the US’s plan for the Strip, which envisions seeing Hamas disarmed and replaced as a governing force. The terror group has previously rejected disarmament.
“We haven’t discussed the weapons yet; no one has spoken to us directly about it. We haven’t spoken with the American side or the mediators on this issue, so we can’t talk about what it means or what the goal is,” Abu Marzouk told the Qatari outlet.
The senior official said a Hamas agreement to hand over its weapons “never happened, not for a single moment did we talk about the surrender of weapons, or any formula about destroying, surrendering, or disarmament.”
If Hamas was not disarmed in two years of war, “how can they obtain it through negotiations?” he asked.
Abu Marzouk indicated some disarmament was open for discussion, however, saying that at the negotiating table, “we will discuss which weapons will be removed, what will be removed, how they will be removed.”
His account contradicted that of Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, who said that senior Hamas officials told him and fellow Trump aide Jared Kushner, hours before the ceasefire was inked in October, that the terror group wanted to disarm.
Hamas has never publicly agreed to disarm
At least publicly, however, Hamas has never agreed to lay down its arms.
Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza explicitly says that Hamas must give up its weapons, but the Hamas statement endorsing the plan contained significant conditions and did not directly mention disarmament.
Rather, the group said at the time that “other issues mentioned in President Trump’s proposal” — an apparent euphemism for disarming — would “be discussed within a comprehensive Palestinian national framework.”
Hamas, Israel and the mediating countries also signed a separate, one-page document in Sharm el-Sheikh the day before the ceasefire began. But that text focused specifically on the first phase of the Trump program, primarily the hostage-for-prisoners swap, while the terror group’s disarmament is envisioned as part of phase two.
Phase two — which has officially started, after the recovery this week of the body of Ran Gvili, the last slain Israeli held hostage in the Strip — calls for the day-to-day governance of Gaza to be handed from Hamas to the newly formed National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, or NCAG.
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