Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad both refused to commit to disarmament this week – brazenly disregarding a peace plan proposed by President Donald Trump and accepted by both militant groups – with a senior Hamas official telling Reuters he could not say “yes or no” to handing over weapons. At the same time, an Islamic Jihad leader claimed al Jazeera That disarmament was never even discussed, and Trump is “talking to himself.”
The back-to-back rejections expose the weakness of the weeks-old ceasefire and show that both militant groups are in a position to remain armed indefinitely while demanding political concessions that Israel has refused for decades.
In an interview with Reuters published on Friday, Hamas Politburo member Mohammad Nazzal was asked directly whether Hamas would give up its weapons. “I can’t answer yes or no,” Nazzal responded – a surprising denial given that disarmament is a central requirement of Trump’s 20-point peace plan that Hamas had agreed to sign just days earlier.
When pressed on what disarmament would mean, the Nazggar challenged the concept itself. “What do you mean by the disarmament project you are talking about? To whom will the weapons be handed over?” He clarified to Reuters that Hamas does not see giving up weapons as an obligation but as a hypothetical topic for future debate.
Speaking on Wednesday from Doha, where Hamas’s political leadership has resided for years, Nazzal further said – Hamas intends to maintain armed control over Gaza indefinitely. “On the ground, Hamas will continue to exist,” he said, directly contradicting Trump’s plan that would have required the terrorist group to hand over all security functions to a technocratic civilian administration overseen by international monitors.
Nazzal also revealed that Hamas is stipulating long-term peace on achieving statehood first – a sharp contrast to Trump’s framework. The Hamas official said the group would accept a ceasefire of up to five years, but only if the Palestinians gained “horizon and hope” for statehood, with disarmament being negotiated after major political concessions rather than an immediate need to end the war.
Just a day before Nazzal’s interview, Palestinian Islamic Jihad went even further – flatly denying that disarmament was ever part of the negotiations.
“Hamas and the resistance have not agreed on disarmament. On the contrary, they announced before, during and after the talks that the issue was not discussed at all,” said Muhammad al-Hindi, deputy secretary general of Islamic Jihad. al JazeeraAccording to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
Al-Hindi’s claim directly contradicts Trump’s repeated public statements that Hamas has committed to disarmament as a condition of the ceasefire. The Deputy Secretary-General of Islamic Jihad categorically declared that the weapons “belong to the Palestinian people, and will not be surrendered before the creation of a Palestinian state” – thereby making statehood a precondition for even considering disarmament.
After this, the Islamic Jihad leader personally mocked Trump, accusing him of giving lip service. ,[Trump] It seems to be having a conversation with itself,” Al-Hindi said. “Negotiations were happening all the time between the Americans and the Israelis, and then the mediators were briefed, and they passed the information to Hamas and the resistance groups.”
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. He said Trump only cares about “deals and investments.” Al-Hindi 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 a little more than 70 years” – erasing millennia of Jewish civilization in the Land of Israel.
The dual denials apply directly to the peace deal Trump announced at a signing ceremony in Egypt on Monday. Trump made disarmament an explicit precondition for reconstruction, declaring, “The reconstruction of Gaza requires that it be demilitarized and that a new, honest civilian police force be allowed in to create a safe situation for the people in Gaza.” The 20-point plan requires Hamas to return all hostages – including all bodies of those killed in captivity – before disarming and handing over all governance to an internationally supervised technical committee.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office responded to Nazal’s refusal by clarifying that compliance is mandatory. “Hamas should have released all hostages in Phase 1. This did not happen. Hamas knows where the bodies of our hostages are,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement to Reuters. “Under this agreement, Hamas has to disarm. No ifs and buts. They are running out of time.”
On the same day Al-Hindi claimed disarmament was never discussed, Trump warned terrorist groups that giving up weapons is non-negotiable. “They will disarm, and if they don’t disarm, we will disarm them, and it will happen quickly and probably violently,” Trump said Tuesday.
Even though both terrorist groups refuse to commit to disarmament, Hamas is killing Palestinians and ruthlessly consolidating power across Gaza – Nazzal defended these actions in his Reuters interview while also arguing that Hamas should remain armed.
Within hours of the ceasefire taking effect on Monday, Hamas executed alleged collaborators on the streets of Gaza City, blindfolded people accused of working with Israel, forced them to kneel and shot them at close range in broad daylight. Nazzal dismissed the killings as “extraordinary measures” taken during the war.
But the execution was only the beginning. Reuters, citing Palestinian security sources, reported that Hamas killed more than 30 people it labeled as “gang” members as the militant group re-established control over all of Gaza. Hamas’s so-called “Internal Security Forces” are conducting what the group describes as a “wide-scale regional campaign to locate and arrest collaborators and informants in all areas of the Gaza Strip from north to south” – a reign of terror targeting anyone suspected of collaboration with Israel.
Following the Israeli military withdrawal, Hamas is also fighting a violent battle with the Doghmush clan and other rival factions competing for control. A pro-Hamas social media influencer known as “Mr. Fafo” was killed by rivals in the chaos.
In addition to the killings, Hamas has openly violated the ceasefire by sending wrong bodies to Israel instead of returning hostages as required.
Israel reacted with fury on Wednesday when forensic testing revealed that a body delivered by Hamas through the Red Cross was not an Israeli hostage at all, but a dead Palestinian flown in from Gaza. Under the ceasefire agreement, Hamas committed to return the bodies of 28 hostages who died or were murdered during their captivity. As of Thursday, Hamas had handed over only ten bodies – including the corpse of a Palestinian misidentified as an Israeli hostage – while 19 bodies are still in the terrorist group’s possession.
“It has been confirmed that the body is not that of a hostage,” said Shosh Bedrosian, a spokesman for Netanyahu’s office. “Hamas must uphold its commitments and return all our hostages. We will not compromise on this.”
Hamas had previously committed a similar betrayal – in February handing over a Palestinian body instead of that of Shiri Bibas, the mother of the Bibas children, who was also murdered in Hamas captivity.
Nazzal told Reuters that Hamas had no interest in keeping the bodies and claimed the group faced “technical problems” in recovering them, adding that Hamas needed specialist equipment to locate the remains. The 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 – a day after Nazzal’s interview and two days after al-Hindi’s rejection – Trump extended his ultimatum in response to Hamas’ continued killings and violations.
“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 Thursday that he expected Hamas to honor its word. “We’ve got a commitment from them, and I think they’ll honor their commitment,” Trump said.
Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad have now made clear that they will not disarm until Palestinian statehood is achieved – a complete reversal of Trump’s framework by demanding political concessions before security guarantees.
This position is fundamentally inconsistent with both Israel’s core security needs and Trump’s peace plan, which makes immediate disarmament a prerequisite for any reconstruction or regime change. Their defiance now threatens to collapse the agreement entirely – 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,
