Palestinian terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad this week refused to commit to disarmament, brazenly defying a peace plan proposed by President Donald Trump and accepted by both terrorist groups. At the same time, the leader of Islamic Jihad stated that Al Jazeera that disarmament was not even discussed, and Trump was “negotiating with himself.”
The successive refusals demonstrate the fragility of the week-long ceasefire and show that both terrorist groups are positioning themselves to remain armed indefinitely while demanding political concessions that Israel has refused for decades.
In an interview with Reuters published On Friday, Hamas Politburo member Mohammed Nazzal was asked directly whether Hamas would give up its weapons. “I can’t answer yes or no,” Nazzal responded—a stunning refusal, given that disarmament is a central requirement of Trump’s 20-point peace plan, which Hamas had agreed to sign just days earlier.
When Nazzal was asked what disarmament would even mean, he challenged the concept itself. “The disarmament project you are talking about, what does it mean? Who will the weapons be transferred to?” he asked Reuters, making clear that Hamas views the renunciation of weapons not as a commitment but as a hypothetical topic for future debate.
Speaking on Wednesday from Doha, where Hamas's political leadership has resided for years, Nazzal went further, saying Hamas intends to maintain armed control of the Gaza Strip indefinitely. “Hamas will be on the ground,” he said, directly contradicting Trump's plan to require the terror group to hand over all security functions to a technocratic civilian administration overseen by international observers.
Nazzal also said that Hamas conditions any long-term peace on achieving statehood first, which is contrary to Trump's vision. A Hamas spokesman said the group would agree to a ceasefire of up to five years but only if Palestinians were given “horizons and hope” of statehood, positioning disarmament as something that could only be negotiated after major political concessions rather than an immediate demand for an end to the war.
Just a day before Nazzal's interview, Palestinian Islamic Jihad went even further – categorically denying that disarmament was ever part of the negotiations.
“Hamas and the resistance did not agree to disarmament. On the contrary, they stated before, during and after the negotiations that this issue was not discussed at all,” said the deputy secretary general of Islamic Jihad, Muhammad al-Hindi. Al Jazeeraaccording to a translation by the Middle East Media Studies Institute.
Al-Hindi's statement directly contradicts Trump's repeated public statements that Hamas has committed to disarmament as a condition of the ceasefire. The deputy secretary general of Islamic Jihad categorically stated that the weapons “belong to the Palestinian people and they will not be surrendered until a Palestinian state is established,” making statehood a precondition for even considering disarmament.
The Islamic Jihad leader then ridiculed Trump personally, accusing him of conducting sham negotiations. “[Trump] “It looks like he's negotiating with himself,” Al-Hindi said. “Negotiations have been going on between the Americans and the Israelis all along, and then the mediators will be informed and they will pass on the information to Hamas and the resistance groups.”
Al-Hindi called Trump fundamentally ignorant of the region. “He does not understand the history, beliefs and culture of the region,” an Islamic Jihad spokesman said, adding that Trump is only interested in “deals and investments.” Al-Hindi also completely rewrote history, stating that “Islam has existed in this region for less than 1,400 years. Where was Israel 3,000 years ago? It existed for a little over 70 years,” destroying millennia of Jewish civilization in the land of Israel.
The twin denials directly contradict the peace deal Trump announced Monday at a signing ceremony in Egypt. “The reconstruction of Gaza requires that it be demilitarized and that a new, honest civilian police force be allowed to create a safe environment for the people of the Gaza Strip,” Trump said, making disarmament an explicit precondition for reconstruction. The 20-point plan calls for Hamas to return all hostages, including all the bodies of those killed in captivity, before disarming and handing over all control to an internationally controlled technocratic committee.
Office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu replied to Nazzal's refusal, making it clear that compliance was mandatory. “Hamas should release all the hostages in the first stage. It did not. Hamas knows where the bodies of our hostages are,” the prime minister's office said in a statement to Reuters. “Hamas must be disarmed in accordance with this agreement. There are no ifs or buts. They are running out of time.”
On the same day that Al-Hindi said disarmament was never on the table, Trump warned terrorist groups that giving up guns was non-negotiable. “They will disarm, and if they don’t disarm, we will disarm them, and it will happen quickly and possibly brutally,” Trump said Tuesday.
Even though both terrorist groups refused to commit to disarmament, Hamas executed Palestinians and brutally consolidated power in the Gaza Strip – actions that Nazzal defended in an interview with Reuters while arguing that Hamas must remain armed.
Hours after the ceasefire took effect on Monday, Hamas executed suspected collaborators on the streets of Gaza City. blindfolding men accused of collaborating with Israel, forcing them to kneel and shooting them at point-blank range in broad daylight. Nazzal called the killings “exceptional measures” taken during the war.
But the executions were only the beginning. Reuters, citing Palestinian security sources, said Hamas had killed more than 30 people it described as members of a “gang” as the terror group regains control of the Gaza Strip. Hamas's so-called “internal security forces” are conducting what the group calls “a large-scale field campaign in all areas of the Gaza Strip, from north to south, to find and arrest collaborators and informants” – a reign of terror targeting anyone suspected of collaborating with Israel.
Hamas was also conducting Fierce battles with the Dogmush clan and other rival factions vying for control as Israeli troops withdraw. One Hamas supporter on social media known as “Mr. Fafo” was killed rivals in chaos.
In addition to the killings, Hamas brazenly violated the ceasefire by delivering the wrong bodies to Israel instead of returning the hostages as required.
Israel reacted furious Wednesday after forensic tests revealed that one body delivered by Hamas through the Red Cross was not an Israeli hostage at all, but rather a dead Palestinian from Gaza. Under the ceasefire agreement, Hamas pledged to return the bodies of 28 hostages who died or were killed during captivity. As of Thursday, Hamas had handed over only ten bodies, including a misidentified Palestinian corpse passed off as an Israeli hostage, leaving 19 bodies still in the terror group's custody.
“It has been confirmed that the body is not that of the hostage,” said Shosh Bedrossian, a spokesman for Netanyahu's office. “Hamas must fulfill its obligations and return all our hostages. We will not compromise on this issue.”
Hamas has resorted to the same deception before – in February it delivered the corpse of a Palestinian instead of the body of Shiri Bibas, the mother of Bibas' children, who were also killed in Hamas captivity.
Nazzal told Reuters that Hamas was not interested in preserving the bodies and said the group was experiencing “technical problems” in returning them, saying Hamas needed special equipment to locate the remains. The families of the hostages demanded that Israel suspend the next phase of the ceasefire until Hamas returns all the bodies as agreed.
On Thursday – a day after Nazzal's interview and two days after Al-Hindi's refusal – Trump worsened his ultimatum in response to ongoing killings and abuses by Hamas.
“If Hamas continues to kill people in the Gaza Strip, which was not in the Agreement, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them,” Trump wrote on Truth Social after a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The president also told reporters Thursday that he expects Hamas to keep its word. “We have commitments on their part, and I assume they are going to honor them,” Trump said.
Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad have now made it clear that they will not disarm until Palestinian statehood is achieved, reversing Trump's structure by demanding political concessions over security guarantees, rather than the other way around.
This position is fundamentally incompatible with both Israel's basic security requirements and the Trump peace plan, which makes immediate disarmament a precondition for any reconstruction or change of control. Their defiance now threatens the complete collapse of the agreement, and Trump has made clear that further violations will be met with force.
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.
.png?width=1200&height=630&fit=crop&enable=upscale&auto=webp&w=150&resize=150,150&ssl=1 "Ghost of Yōtei is waiting to hear from you before deciding what, if any, DLC is needed")
