Palestinian terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad both refused to commit to disarmament this week – blatantly defying the peace plan brokered by President Donald Trump and both terror groups accepted – with a senior Hamas official telling Reuters he could not say “yes or no” to handing over weapons. At the same time, a leader of Islamic Jihad claimed Al Jazeera that disarmament has never even been discussed, and Trump is ‘negotiating with himself’.
The successive rejections expose the fragility of the week-old ceasefire and show that both terror groups are positioning themselves to remain armed indefinitely while demanding political concessions that Israel has denied for decades.
In an interview with Reuters published On Friday, Mohammed Nazzal, a member of the Hamas Politburo, was asked directly whether Hamas would give up its weapons. “I can’t answer yes or no,” Nazzal responded — a stunning refusal considering that disarmament is the central requirement of Trump’s 20-point peace plan that Hamas had signed a few days earlier.
When Nazzal was asked what disarmament would even mean, he challenged the concept itself. “The disarmament project you are talking about, what does that mean? Who will the weapons be transferred to?” he asked Reuters, making clear that Hamas is giving up its weapons not as an obligation but as a hypothetical topic for future debate.
On Wednesday, Nazzal continued speaking from Doha, where Hamas’s political leadership has been based for years, stating that Hamas intends to maintain armed control over Gaza indefinitely. “On the ground, Hamas will be present,” he declared, directly contradicting Trump’s plan that required the terrorist group to cede all security functions to a technocratic civilian administration overseen by international observers.
Nazzal also revealed that Hamas is making any long-term peace dependent on first achieving statehood – the opposite of Trump’s framework. The Hamas official said the group would accept a ceasefire of up to five years but only if Palestinians are given “horizons and hope” for a state, positioning disarmament as something to be negotiated only after major political concessions, rather than as an immediate requirement for ending the war.
Just one day before Nazzal’s interview, Palestinian Islamic Jihad went even further – outright denying that disarmament was ever part of the negotiations.
“Hamas and the resistance have not agreed to disarm. On the contrary, they stated before, during and after the negotiations that this issue had not been discussed at all,” Islamic Jihad Deputy Secretary General Muhammad Al-Hindi said. Al Jazeeraaccording to a translation from the Middle East Media Research Institute.
Al-Hindi’s claim directly contradicts Trump’s repeated public statements that Hamas has committed to disarm as a condition of the ceasefire. The deputy secretary general of Islamic Jihad stated bluntly that the weapons “belong to the Palestinian people, and they will not be surrendered until there is a Palestinian state” – making statehood a prerequisite for even considering disarmament.
The Islamic Jihad leader then personally mocked Trump and accused him of conducting sham negotiations. “[Trump] It seems he is negotiating with himself,” Al-Hindi said. “The negotiations were taking place all the time between the Americans and the Israelis, and then the mediators would be informed, and they would pass the information on to Hamas and the resistance factions.”
Al-Hindi dismissed Trump as fundamentally ignorant of the region. “He does not understand the history, beliefs and culture of the region,” the Islamic Jihad official claimed, adding that Trump only cares about “deals and investments.” Al-Hindi also completely rewrote history, claiming: “Islam has been in the region for less than 1,400 years. Where was Israel 3,000 years ago? It existed for just over 70 years” – erasing millennia of Jewish civilization in the Land of Israel.
The double refusals are in direct conflict with the peace agreement that Trump announced during the signing ceremony in Egypt on Monday. “Rebuilding Gaza requires that it be demilitarized and that a new, honest civilian police force be able to create a safe environment for the people of Gaza,” Trump declared, making disarmament an explicit condition for reconstruction. The 20-point plan calls for Hamas to return all hostages – including all bodies of those killed in captivity – before disarming and handing over all governance to an internationally supervised technocratic committee.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to Nazzal’s refusal by making it clear that compliance is mandatory. “Hamas is supposed to release all hostages in phase 1. That did not happen. Hamas knows where the bodies of our hostages are,” the prime minister’s office said in a statement to Reuters. “Hamas must be disarmed under this agreement. No ifs, no buts. They are running out of time.”
On the same day that Al-Hindi claimed that disarmament was never discussed, Trump warned terror groups that giving up weapons is non-negotiable. “They will disarm, and if they don’t disarm, we will disarm them, and it will be done quickly and perhaps violently,” Trump said Tuesday.
Even as both terror groups refused to disarm themselves, Hamas executed Palestinians and brutally consolidated power in Gaza – actions that Nazzal defended in his interview with Reuters, while at the same time arguing that Hamas should remain armed.
Within hours of the ceasefire taking effect on Monday, Hamas executed suspected collaborators on the streets of Gaza City, blindfolding men accused of collaborating with Israel, forcing them to kneel and shooting them in broad daylight. Nazzal dismissed the killings as “exceptional measures” taken in wartime.
But the executions were just the beginning. Reuters reported, citing Palestinian security sources, that Hamas has killed more than 30 people it labeled “gang members” as the terror group reasserts control over all of Gaza. Hamas’s so-called “internal security forces” are waging what the group describes as a “large-scale field campaign in all parts of the Gaza Strip, from north to south, to locate and arrest collaborators and informants” – a reign of terror targeting anyone suspected of collaborating with Israel.
Hamas has also engaged in violent battles with the Doghmush clan and other rival factions vying for control as Israeli forces retreated. A pro-Hamas social media influencer known as “Mr. Fafo” was killed by rivals in the chaos.
In addition to the killings, Hamas has blatantly violated the ceasefire by delivering the wrong bodies to Israel instead of returning the hostages as required.
Israel reacted angrily on Wednesday after forensic tests revealed that a body delivered by Hamas through the Red Cross was not an Israeli hostage at all, but rather a dead Palestinian from Gaza. Under the ceasefire, Hamas has committed to returning the bodies of 28 hostages who were killed or murdered while in captivity. By Thursday, Hamas had handed over just ten bodies – including the misidentified Palestinian corpse passed off as an Israeli hostage – leaving 19 bodies in the terror group’s custody.
“It has been confirmed that the body is not that of a hostage,” said Shosh Bedrosian, a spokesman for Netanyahu’s office. “Hamas is obliged to fulfill its obligations and return all our hostages. We will not compromise on this.”
Hamas has previously committed the same deception: delivering a Palestinian corpse in February instead of the body of Shiri Bibas, the mother of the Bibas children who were also murdered in Hamas captivity.
Nazzal told Reuters that Hamas has no interest in keeping the bodies and claimed the group is experiencing “technical difficulties” in recovering them. He said Hamas needs specialist equipment to locate the remains. Families of the hostages have demanded that Israel suspend the next phase of the ceasefire until Hamas returns all the bodies as agreed.
On Thursday – one day after Nazzal’s interview and two days after Al-Hindi’s rejection – Trump escalated his ultimatum in response to Hamas’ continued killings and abuses.
“If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them,” Trump wrote on Truth Social after a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The president also told reporters on Thursday that he expects Hamas to keep its word. “We have a commitment from them and I trust they will honor their commitment,” Trump said.
Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad have now made explicit that they will not disarm until Palestinian statehood is achieved – completely reversing Trump’s framework by demanding political concessions before security guarantees, rather than the other way around.
That position is fundamentally incompatible with both Israel’s core security imperatives and Trump’s peace plan, which makes immediate disarmament a prerequisite for any reconstruction or governance transition. Their resistance now threatens to collapse the deal altogether – and Trump has made clear that further violations will be met with force.
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jklein@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.
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