Hamas won’t give up arms or Gaza control — despite agreeing to Trump deal, spokesman says
Hamas appeared to renege on key demands of President Trump’s cease-fire deal just hours after the world celebrated the end of the Gaza war — with a top official saying the terror group will not give up its arms or control over the Gaza Strip.
Spokesman Hazem Qassem claimed Monday that Hamas has no need to abide by every word of Trump’s 20-point peace plan, including calls for the terror group to lay down its arms.
“We do not need to limit ourselves to the Israeli terms and definitions related to weapons,” Qassem told the Al-Arabiya news channel.
“We will not be captives to Israeli terms or demands,” he added. “This is one of the focal points of the struggle in the next stage, after the cessation of aggression in the Gaza Strip.”
Qassem echoed Hamas’ long-standing position that it will neither give up its weapons nor cede governance over the Gaza Strip until a path is laid out for Palestinian statehood.
Trump’s plan, which saw all 20 living hostages freed on Monday, provides for how Gaza should be governed after Hamas cedes control.
However, the details of how and when that will happen have not yet been agreed upon.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected any and all deals that would see a Palestinian state form.
Netanyahu’s administration has also made it clear that Hamas must disarm for the cease-fire to go through, warning that the military will not allow the terror group to continue posing a threat to the Jewish state.
One of the stated aims of Hamas is the destruction of Israel.
Qassem also appeared to suggest that Hamas would not completely abandon its role as the de facto governors of the Gaza Strip.
The Hamas spokesman claimed Hamas should remain as part of the “administrative arrangements” in the Strip, but he did not specify to what extent.
Qassem claimed that Hamas was open to allowing Palestinian technocrats to lead the management of the enclave, as laid out in Trump’s cease-fire deal.
Hamas was also open to allowing the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank to play an active role in governance despite accusing the group of standing by and doing nothing during the two years of war.
“Despite all our criticism, we do believe that it (the PA) is one of the national addresses, and we are ready to open a new page with it or for it to open a new page with the residents of Gaza and with the political forces and to be truly sincere in its intention to reach shared political understandings,” Qassem said.
Along with laying out his stance, Qassem also accused Israel of violating the cease-fire on Tuesday after five Palestinians were shot and killed in Gaza City.
The IDF claimed the suspects were the ones violating the deal after they allegedly crossed a “yellow line” and approached IDF troops operating in the Strip.
“After multiple attempts to distance them, the suspects refused to comply, prompting troops to open fire to remove the threat,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
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Hamas carries out public executions
— just hours after peace treaty signing
Hamas carried out mass public executions in Gaza on Monday, gruesome video shows — as the bloodthirsty terror group desperately seeks to maintain control over the Palestinian enclave and punish those it deems “collaborators with Israel.”
The barbaric reprisal came just hours after President Trump declared the “end of an age of terror and death” and signed a document enshrining his 20-point peace plan.
The graphic footage shows eight badly beaten, blindfolded men kneeling in the street before each is shot dead by Hamas gunmen in front of a cheering crowd.
The terror group said, without providing evidence, that the killings targeted “criminals and collaborators with Israel,” the BBC reported.
Among those killed was Ahmad Zidan al-Tarabin, reportedly responsible for recruiting agents to a rival non-Hamas-aligned militia, Israeli outlet ynet News reported.
Following the IDF’s withdrawal, Hamas has quickly looked to reassert its control over Gaza, targeting the “clans,” or family-based armed groups that had gained strength during the conflict.
The Palestinian terror group began its deadly reprisals before the peace deal was even signed.
On Sunday, 52 members of the powerful Dagmoush clan were killed in clashes with Hamas’ internal security forces, while 12 Hamas terrorists, including the son of senior official Bassem Naim, also died, according to reports in Gaza.
Hamas militants reportedly used ambulances to storm the neighborhood of the clan, whom they accused of collaboration with Israel.
“It’s a massacre. They’re dragging people away, children are screaming and dying, they’re burning our houses. What did we do wrong?” one clan member’s daughter told Ynet News.
Earlier on Monday, President Trump suggested he had given Hamas approval to manage internal security in Gaza “as it sees fit,” as part of a peace deal to return the remaining living hostages to Israel.
“They [Hamas] do want to stop the problems, and they’ve been open about it, and we gave them approval for a period of time,” he told a reporter on Air Force One.
“You have close to 2 million people going back to buildings that have been demolished, and a lot of bad things can happen. So we want it to be — we want it to be safe. I think it’s going to be fine. Who knows for sure,” he said.
However, Trump vowed Tuesday that “we will disarm” Hamas if the group did not lay down its weapons pursuant to his 20-point peace plan.
“Well, they’re going to disarm because they said they were going to disarm, and if they don’t disarm, we will disarm them,” Trump told journalists while hosting visiting Argentine President Javier Milei.
“I don’t have to explain that to you, but if they don’t disarm, we will disarm them. They know I’m not playing games. Okay?”
Under Trump’s peace plan, Hamas was expected to disarm and surrender governance of Gaza, something the terror group has refused to do.
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Mahmoud Abbas Condemns Hamas for Extrajudicial Killings in Gaza
Hamas has been rounding up and executing members of the Gazan clans opposed to the terror group, without any trials. Now Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, has condemned it for this practice. More on the PA’s latest anathema directed at Hamas can be found here:
‘Heinous crimes’: PA condemns Hamas for reported executions in Gaza
by Liran Haroni, Jerusalem Post, October
The Palestinian Authority presidency issued an unusually sharp denunciation of Hamas on Tuesday night, condemning what it called “field executions” carried out in the Gaza Strip in recent days and demanding accountability under Palestinian law.
In a statement carried PA state agency WAFA, the presidency said it “strongly condemns the recent field executions carried out by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which claimed the lives of dozens of citizens outside the framework of the law and without fair trials,” calling the acts “heinous crimes that are utterly rejected under any pretext.”
The statement framed the reported killings as “a blatant violation of human rights” and “a grave breach of the rule of law,” asserting they reflect “the movement’s determination to impose its authority through force and terror, at a time when the people in Gaza are enduring the hardships of war, destruction, and siege.”
It urged an immediate halt to the violations, protection for civilians, and legal action against “all those involved in these crimes within the framework of the law and the legitimate Palestinian judiciary.”
Underscoring the PA’s claim to national responsibility, the presidency said Gaza “is an integral part of the State of Palestine” and argued that restoring “the rule of law and legitimate institutions” in the territory is the only path to ending chaos and rebuilding public trust “on the basis of justice, accountability, and respect for the dignity of the Palestinian people.”…
Of course, the Palestinian Authority has long been known to arrest, torture, and even kill dissidents, often those protesting against the rampant corruption in the PA, such as Nizar Banat, without any trials. That hasn’t stopped Abbas from waxing indignant about Hamas’ failure to observe “the rule of law.” But when have charges of hypocrisy ever bothered Mahmoud Abbas, the “democratically” elected president of the PA, now in the 20th year of his four-year-term, the man who managed, on a salary of $120,000, to accumulate a personal fortune of at least $100 million?
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