Hamas’s Haniyeh says postwar plans for Gaza that exclude terror group will be rejected

Hamas’s Qatar-based chief Ismail Haniyeh says that any post-war plan for Gaza that excludes Hamas will be rejected by the terror group.

“Hamas existed to stay,” he says in a televised speech. “The movement [Hamas] will decide, along with all national factions, the administration of the Gaza Strip after the war.”

Haniyeh also blames Israel for the current deadlock in negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage release deal, saying that by demanding the terror group amend its proposal, it has led the talks into a stalemate.

Earlier this month, Hamas claimed to have accepted a truce agreement with Israel, though it later emerged that the proposal it said had come from Egyptian and Qatari mediators included several elements fundamentally different from what Israel had agreed to.

Jerusalem swiftly rejected the proposal for falling short of its “vital demands,” but okayed dispatching a working-level delegation to the indirect talks in Cairo.

Days later, however, Hamas said talks had ended after Israel “rejected the proposal submitted by the mediators and raised objections to it.”

The terror group said it had decided to stick to the terms of the proposal it had agreed to, rejecting the possibility of making any concessions.

Haniyeh reiterates the group’s demand that a ceasefire agreement should end the war in the Gaza Strip, which Israel has said it will not agree to until it achieves its goals, which include destroying Hamas’s military and governance capabilities.