Hamas representatives have told mediators they will not discuss disarmament before receiving guarantees that the Israel Defense Forces will fully withdraw from the Gaza Strip, three sources told Reuters on Thursday.
The terrorist group met with Egyptian, Qatari and Turkish mediators in Cairo on Wednesday and Thursday to give its first response to a disarmament proposal presented by U.S. President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, two Egyptian sources and a Palestinian official told the wire agency.
Hamas presented several demands and proposed amendments to the Board’s plan, including an end to Israeli “violations,” implementation of the entire ceasefire plan and an IDF withdrawal from the enclave, the two Egyptian sources said. The sources said Hamas refused to discuss laying down weapons before those issues are addressed.
Another source with direct knowledge of the Board of Peace’s thinking said that Hamas’s response meant that talks were unlikely to lead to a breakthrough. The source said that the terrorists were supposed to meet with mediators again next week.
Hamas officials declined to comment to Reuters on the content of the meetings. The Israeli government and the Board of Peace did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace’s high representative for Gaza, said on Wednesday that “all sides have endorsed the plan, the international community has supported it, now is the time to agree to the framework for its implementation.”
The Board of Peace continues to work toward a Gaza “that is reconstructed and secured by the transitional Palestinian administration ... free of weapons and tunnels, and reunified with the reformed and legitimate Palestinian Authority,” he tweeted.
Mladenov last month said that mediators had agreed on a framework for the Strip’s reconstruction and a “negotiated resolution of the Palestinian question.”
The proposal “is now on the table,” Mladenov tweeted on March 19, adding, “It requires one clear choice: full decommissioning by Hamas and every armed group, with no exceptions and no carve-outs.”
An unnamed senior U.S. official told NPR last month that mediators presented Hamas with the proposal in Cairo. However, a Hamas official told the U.S. public broadcaster that the Iranian-backed terrorist group was awaiting the outcome of the joint U.S.-Israeli campaign against the regime in Tehran before responding.
Under the terms of the proposal, Hamas would give up its heavy weapons, including rocket launchers, and share maps of its underground terror tunnel network, NPR reported.
Top Hamas leaders including Khaled Mashaal and Musa Abu Marzouk have rejected key parts of U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan in recent months, including disarmament, despite having agreed to the proposal in October.
“The resistance and its weapons are the ummah’s [Islamic nation’s] honor and pride,” Mashaal told an anti-Israel summit in Istanbul on Dec. 6.
“A thousand statements are not worth a single projectile of iron,” he said.
