Senior Hamas official says group has yet to receive disarmament proposal

Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan says the group has not received any disarmament proposals from Gaza ceasefire mediators, and reiterates Hamas’s refusal to give up its weapons.

Hamdan tells Al Jazeera: “We have not received from mediators any draft or official proposals relating to the weapons of the resistance.” He adds that Hamas has yet to adopt an official position on “freezing” its arms — a move it has proposed as an alternative to full disarmament.

Palestinians’ armed struggle “is a right as long as the occupation remains,” Hamdan says. The word “occupation” is typically used by Hamas to denote Israel in its entirety.

The comments come after a New York Times report yesterday said officials in the US-led Board of Peace planned to let Hamas keep some small arms while requiring it to surrender most of its long-range weapons. The report said mediators planned on sharing the document with Hamas in the coming weeks. Israel has said Gaza can be rebuilt only once Hamas disarms.

Hamdan also repeats Hamas’s position that the International Stabilization Force, which is supposed to maintain security in Gaza under US President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan, should deploy only on the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip, to “prevent hostilities against our people, in accordance with Trump’s plan.”

(That is not what the plan states. The ISF is meant to “train and provide support to vetted Palestinian police forces in Gaza,” provide a “long-term internal security solution,” and “help secure border areas, along with newly trained Palestinian police forces.”)

Hamdan says Hamas has conveyed that position to the government of Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, which on Monday announced it would contribute thousands of troops to the ISF, and whose troops are expected to be the first ISF personnel to deploy in Gaza.

Hamdan accuses Israel of preventing the entry into Gaza of the 12-member technocratic committee that is supposed to administer the Strip under the ceasefire plan. An Arab diplomat has told The Times of Israel that the Palestinian committee will not enter Gaza until it is equipped to govern.

Hamdan also accuses Israel of obstructing operations at the Rafah border crossing and of letting only very few people through since it reopened earlier this month, as part of the Gaza ceasefire.