Khaled Mashaal: Hamas can mothball weapons but won’t disarm; stabilization force inside Gaza is ‘occupation’; 51% of US youth pro-Hamas

Senior Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal says the terror group can “store” its weapons, but won’t give them up as stipulated in US President Donald Trump’s comprehensive Gaza ceasefire plan.

“There are those who want to impose their vision on us, contrary to the Palestinian, Arab and Muslim position,” Mashal says in an interview with Al Jazeera. “For example, the issue of the resistance’s (Hamas’s) weapons.”

“The idea of total disarmament is unacceptable to the resistance. What is being proposed is a freeze, or storage (of weapons)… to provide guarantees against any military escalation from Gaza with the Israeli occupation,” he says.

The experience of Palestinians is that “when the Palestinian is disarmed… massacres follow,” states Mashal, citing the 1982 massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon that took place in the wake of the PLO’s expulsion from the country.

“Disarmament for a Palestinian means stripping away his very soul,” he declares.

Mashal also rejects as “occupation” the International Stabilization Force that would take over Gaza from Hamas and the IDF, as part of Trump’s proposal.

On the other hand, Hamas “has no objection that there be an international stabilization force on the borders,” says Mashal, citing UNIFIL, the international peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, as a model.

Mashal also praises Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023, saying that while Gaza and also the West Bank have paid a heavy price, the ensuing war with Israel has exposed the country’s “ugly face” and given the Palestinians’ cause new life among US and European youth.

“Fifty-one percent of American youth are supportive not only of the Palestinian cause, but of Hamas,” Mashal says.

AFP contributed to this report.