Doha — Hamas reaffirmed on Sunday its commitment to retaining its weapons, saying mediators have understood its position on the matter, while stressing that the threat comes from Israel, not from the Gaza Strip.
اضافة اعلان
The remarks were made by Khaled Meshaal, head of Hamas abroad, during the 17th Al Jazeera Forum held in the Qatari capital, Doha, under the title “The Palestinian Cause and Regional Balances.”
Meshaal said that “Hamas’s vision regarding weapons has been understood by the mediators,” referring to Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey. No immediate official response was issued by the concerned parties regarding his comments.
These countries have mediated indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel that led to a ceasefire agreement which came into effect on October 10, 2025, based on a plan proposed by U.S. President Donald Trump. In mid-January, Trump announced the launch of the second phase of the agreement, which includes the disarmament of Hamas and other Palestinian factions—an option rejected by the movement, which instead proposes “storing or freezing weapons.”
Meshaal said: “Away from Zionist pressure and blackmail, we can reach approaches under what may be called a guarantees framework. The danger comes from Israel, not from Gaza. Gaza needs a long time to recover.”
In what he described as a violation of the agreement, Israel has continued to condition the start of Gaza’s reconstruction on the disarmament of Palestinian factions, following a war that began on October 8, 2023, with U.S. backing and lasted nearly two years.
On guarantees, Meshaal said that “the presence of international forces on Gaza’s borders to keep the peace is a guarantee,” adding that Hamas had also offered a truce lasting five to ten years during which weapons would neither be used nor displayed, with mediators acting as guarantors.
He argued that “the problem is not that Hamas and the resistance forces in Gaza provide guarantees; the problem lies with Israel, which wants to take Palestinian weapons and place them in the hands of militias to create chaos.”
Meshaal pointed to what he called a contradiction, saying it is unacceptable to call for disarming the Palestinian people while legitimizing the weapons of “collaborating militias,” referring to groups Israel has allegedly armed to create disorder in Gaza. In June last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged arming militias in Gaza to use them against Hamas.
Meshaal stressed that “resistance remains a right of peoples under occupation and is part of international law and divine laws,” adding that while the forms of resistance may change, resistance itself will persist as long as occupation continues.
He said that calls to disarm Palestinians while they remain under occupation are “an attempt to turn them into easy victims to be eliminated by Israel, which is armed with the full weight of international weaponry.”
Meshaal also argued that one reason the war in Gaza was halted was that Israel had become a “moral, political, and economic burden,” with public anger spreading internationally.
He called on Arab and Islamic nations to pursue Israel legally and politically to strip it of international legitimacy and to deepen global engagement with the Palestinian cause.
Israel was established in 1948 on lands seized by armed Zionist groups that carried out massacres and displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, and later occupied the remaining Palestinian territories while rejecting withdrawal and the establishment of a Palestinian state.
According to figures cited, the Israeli war on Gaza has left more than 72,000 Palestinians killed and over 171,000 wounded, with around 90 percent of civilian infrastructure destroyed. The United Nations estimates reconstruction costs at approximately $70 billion. Israel continues to violate the ceasefire daily, resulting in hundreds of additional casualties, most of them women and children, while restricting the entry of agreed humanitarian aid to Gaza, where some 2.4 million Palestinians face dire conditions.
— (Anadolu Agency)
