Senior Hamas official: We never agreed to give up weapons, no one has talked to us directly about it

Hamas never agreed to disarm, says senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump insist that the terror group must give up its weapons in the near future.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Abu Marzouk says that “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.”

He says that 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 Israel, the US and the West failed to disarm Hamas through two years of war, “how can they obtain it through negotiations?” he asks.

Hamas has indeed never publicly agreed to disarm.

Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza does explicitly say that Hamas must disarm, but the Hamas statement endorsing the plan issued on October 3 contained significant conditions and did not mention disarming directly. It said that “other issues mentioned in President Trump’s proposal” — a euphemism for disarming — would “be discussed within a comprehensive Palestinian national framework.”

Hamas, Israel and the mediating countries signed another one-page document in Sharm el-Sheikh the day before the ceasefire began, but it focuses on the first phase of the Trump program, primarily the hostage-for-prisoners swap.

Abu Marzouk says that at the negotiating table “we will discuss which weapons will be removed, what will be removed, how they will be removed.”

Abu Marzouk also stresses that it is Hamas running Gaza: “The movement has restored order to the Gaza Strip to serve the Palestinian people and preserve their security.”

He hints that Hamas has a veto over the new technocratic committee set up to run Gaza, emphasizing that no one can enter Gaza without Hamas’s consent. At the same time, he says Hamas will facilitate the committee’s work, and “provide security.”