Any deal that allows Hamas to keep its arsenal of weapons is simply a green light to the Islamists to pursue their jihad against Israel.
By Khaled Abu Toameh, Gatestone Institute
As the war in the Gaza Strip is about to enter its 20th month, the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group has once again repeated its refusal to disarm. It says the weapons are needed to continue its fight against Israel.
Those who believe that Hamas would ever agree to lay down its weapons are living in a dream world. There is, unfortunately, only one way to convince Hamas to disarm: military force.
Recently, two senior Hamas officials, Mahmoud Mardawi and Bassam Naim, announced their group’s absolute rejection of any proposal related to laying down its weapons.
They said that other Palestinian terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip also reject any plan to disarm.
“The [Palestinian] resistance’s weapons represent the life of the Palestinian people and cannot be relinquished under any circumstances,” Mardawi said in a statement to Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV station.
Hamas, he added, “will not negotiate over its weapons, or those who carry them, at any stage. The mere entry into a discussion about this issue is completely unacceptable.”
Naim also told the TV station that Hamas would not lay down its weapons and that the “resistance will continue as long as there is an [Israeli] occupation.”
Israel, however, effectively ended its “occupation” of the Gaza Strip in 2005, when it totally withdrew from the entire coastal strip.
That evacuation, however, did not stop Hamas from continuing its campaign of terrorism against Israel, including launching rockets and missiles towards Israeli cities and towns.
Hamas continued to attack Israel because it does not believe in Israel’s right to exist and considers all the land stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea “occupied territories.”
Hamas was not established to end the Israeli “occupation” of the Gaza Strip. Hamas was created with the sole purpose of eliminating Israel and replacing it with an Islamist state.
Article 7 of the Hamas charter describes the Jews living in Israel as “invaders” and vows to launch a jihad (holy war) against them:
“The Islamic Resistance Movement [Hamas} is one of the links in the chain of the struggle against the Zionist invaders. It goes back to 1939, to the emergence of the martyr Izz al-Din al Kissam and his brethren the fighters, members of Moslem Brotherhood. It goes on to reach out and become one with another chain that includes the struggle of the Palestinians and Moslem Brotherhood in the 1948 war and the Jihad operations of the Moslem Brotherhood in 1968 and after…
“[T]he Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realization of Allah’s promise, no matter how long that should take. The prophet [Mohammed], Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: ‘The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’”
Article 11 of the charter states:
“The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that.”
Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood organization, believes that it is the duty of every Muslim to engage in jihad against Israel. As far as Hamas is concerned, according to its covenant:
“[L]iberation of Palestine [a euphemism for the destruction of Israel] is then an individual duty for very Moslem wherever he may be. On this basis, the problem should be viewed. This should be realised by every Moslem…. It is necessary to instill in the minds of the Moslem generations that the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis. ”
There is, in reality, no difference between Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood organization. Hamas is not so much an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood as an extension of it.
This linkage is why the Trump administration needs to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
We have seen how Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Egypt, Jordan and other Arab countries have come out in support of Hamas, especially after its October 7, 2023 invasion of Israel, which resulted in the murder of 1,200 Israelis and the injury of thousands. Another 251 Israelis were kidnapped to the Gaza Strip, where 59 – dead and alive – are still held as hostages.
Hamas sees no difference between an Israeli soldier and an Israeli civilian. To Hamas, everyone in Israel is a “Zionist invader.” This view is why Hamas has been targeting Jews not only in Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip, but also in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, and other Israeli cities.
Hamas wants to keep its weapons so that it could kill even those Jews who “hide behind stones and trees.”
Hamas also wants to hold on to its weapons so that it can continue to oppress Palestinians who dare to speak out against the terrorist group. This old but reliable method of control is how Hamas has managed to remain in power for the past two decades.
Any deal that allows Hamas to keep its arsenal of weapons is simply a green light to the Islamists to pursue their jihad against Israel. It is a waste of time to demand that Hamas just be removed from power in the Gaza Strip.
The Trump administration actually needs to place the issue of disarming Hamas and all the Palestinian terrorist groups not among its demands, but at the top.
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