The Palestinian movements Hamas and Islamic Jihad refused to commit to disarmament this week — brazenly defying a peace plan brokered by President Donald Trump and accepted by both — with a senior Hamas official telling Reuters he could not say “yes or no” to handing over weapons. At the same time, a leader in the Islamic Jihad movement announced The island Disarmament was never discussed, and Trump is “negotiating with himself.”
The successive rejections reveal the fragility of the week-long ceasefire, and reveal that both Palestinian movements are preparing to remain armed indefinitely while demanding political concessions that Israel has rejected for decades.
In an interview with Reuters published On Friday, Hamas Political Bureau member Mohamed Nazzal was asked directly whether Hamas would give up its weapons. “I can’t answer yes or no,” Nazzal replied, a stunning refusal given that disarmament is the core demand of Trump’s 20-point peace plan that Hamas agreed to sign just days ago.
When asked what disarmament meant, Nazzal challenged the very concept. “The disarmament project you are talking about, what does it mean? To whom will the weapons be delivered?” He asked Reuters, explaining Hamas’s view of giving up weapons not as an obligation but as a hypothetical topic for discussion in the future.
Speaking on Wednesday from Doha, where Hamas’s political leadership has resided for years, Nazzal went further — declaring that Hamas intends to maintain its armed control over Gaza indefinitely. “On the ground, Hamas will be present,” he said, which is in direct contradiction to Trump’s plan that would require the terrorist group to cede all security functions to a technocratic civilian administration overseen by international monitors.
Nazzal also revealed that Hamas links any long-term peace to first achieving statehood – the opposite of Trump’s framework. The Hamas official said the movement would accept a ceasefire for up to five years but only if the Palestinians were given “prospects and hope” for statehood, with disarmament positioned as something that could only be negotiated after significant political concessions and not an immediate demand for an end to the war.
Just one day before Nazzal’s interview, Palestinian Islamic Jihad went further, flatly denying that disarmament was part of the negotiations at all.
Deputy Secretary-General of the Islamic Jihad Movement, Muhammad al-Hindi, said, “Hamas and the resistance did not agree to disarm. On the contrary, we announced before, during and after the negotiations that this issue had not been raised at all.” The islandAccording to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
Al-Hindi’s claim directly contradicts Trump’s repeated public statements that Hamas is committed to disarming as a condition for a ceasefire. The Deputy Secretary-General of Islamic Jihad declared categorically that the weapons “belong to the Palestinian people, and will not be delivered before there is a Palestinian state” – making statehood a precondition for even considering disarmament.
The Islamic Jihad leader then mocked Trump personally, accusing him of conducting phony negotiations. “[Trump] Al-Hindi said: “It seems that he is negotiating with himself. Negotiations were taking place between the Americans and the Israelis all the time, and then the mediators were informed, and they passed the information to Hamas and the resistance factions.”
The Indian dismissed Trump as fundamentally ignorant of the region. The Islamic Jihad official claimed that he “does not understand the region’s history, beliefs and culture,” adding that Trump is only interested in “deals and investments.” Al-Hindi also completely rewrote history, claiming that “Islam has been in the region for less than 1,400 years. Where was Israel 3,000 years ago? It has been around for just over 70 years” – erasing thousands of years of Jewish civilization in the Land of Israel.
The double rejection directly contradicts the peace agreement that Trump announced on Monday during the signing ceremony in Egypt. “Reconstructing Gaza requires that it be demilitarized, and that a new, honest, civilian police force be allowed to create safe conditions for the people in Gaza,” Trump declared, making demilitarization a clear precondition for rebuilding. The 20-point plan requires Hamas to return all hostages – including all the bodies of those killed in captivity – before disarming and relinquishing all governance to a committee of technocrats under international supervision.
Office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu He responded To refuse a fight by making it clear that compliance is mandatory. The Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement to Reuters, “Hamas was supposed to release all the hostages in the first stage. But that did not happen. Hamas knows where the bodies of our hostages are.” “Hamas must be disarmed under this agreement. No, no, no. They are running out of time.”
On the same day that Al-Hindi claimed that disarmament was never discussed, Trump warned terrorist groups that giving up weapons was non-negotiable. “They’re going to lay down their guns, and if they don’t lay down their guns, we’re going to take their guns away, and it’s going to happen quickly and maybe violently,” Trump said Tuesday.
Even as both terrorist groups refuse to commit to disarmament, Hamas has been executing Palestinians and brutally consolidating its power throughout Gaza — actions that Nazzal defended in his interview with Reuters while at the same time saying Hamas must remain armed.
Within hours of the ceasefire taking effect on Monday, Hamas executed alleged collaborators in the streets of Gaza City, blindfolded men accused of working with Israel, forced them to kneel, and shot them at point-blank range in broad daylight. Nazzal rejected the killings and described them as “exceptional measures” taken during the war.
But the executions were just the beginning. Reuters reported, citing Palestinian security sources, that Hamas killed more than 30 people, whom it described as “gang” members, while the terrorist group regained control over all of Gaza. Hamas’s so-called “Internal Security Forces” were carrying out what the group describes as “a large-scale field campaign in all areas 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 is also locked in violent battles with the Dughmush clan and other rival factions vying for control as Israeli forces withdraw. A pro-Hamas social media influencer, known as “Mr. Favo,” was killed by his rivals in the chaos.
Beyond the killings, Hamas has brazenly 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 one of the bodies handed over by Hamas via the Red Cross was not an Israeli hostage at all but a dead Palestinian from Gaza. Under the ceasefire agreement, Hamas committed to returning the bodies of 28 hostages who were killed or killed during captivity. As of Thursday, Hamas had handed over only ten bodies — including a misidentified Palestinian body identified as an Israeli hostage — leaving 19 bodies still in the movement’s custody.
“It has been confirmed that the body is not that of a hostage,” said Shosh Bedrosian, spokesman for Netanyahu’s office. He added: “Hamas is required to fulfill its obligations and return all our hostages. We will not give up on this matter.”
Hamas has used the same deception before – handing over the body of a Palestinian in February instead of that of Sheri Bibas, the mother of the Bibas children who were also killed in Hamas captivity.
Nazzal told Reuters that Hamas had no interest in keeping the bodies, and claimed that the movement was facing “technical problems” in recovering them, saying that Hamas needed specialized equipment to locate the remains. The families of the hostages demanded that Israel suspend the next phase of the ceasefire until Hamas returns all the bodies as agreed upon.
On Thursday — one day after Nazzal’s interview and two days after Al-Hindi’s refusal — Trump escalated his ultimatum in response to continued killings and abuses by Hamas.
“If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not part of 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 expected Hamas to honor its word. “We have a commitment from them, and I assume they will honor their commitment,” Trump said.
Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad have now made clear that they will not disarm until Palestinian statehood is achieved – mirroring Trump’s entire framework by demanding political concessions before security guarantees rather than the other way around.
This position is fundamentally inconsistent with Israel’s basic security requirements and Trump’s peace plan, which makes immediate disarmament a precondition for any reconstruction or transition of government. Their defiance now threatens to collapse the agreement 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 @Joshua Klein.