Hamas has rejected reports that it expressed a willingness to disarm during Gaza ceasefire negotiations with Israel, stressing that it has a “national and legal” right to confront the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.
The Palestinian group responded on Saturday to recent remarks purportedly made by United States President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, during a meeting with relatives of Israeli captives held in Gaza.
Citing a recording of the talks, Israeli news outlet Haaretz reported that the US envoy told the families that Hamas said it was “prepared to be demilitarised”.
But in a statement, Hamas said “the resistance and its weapons are a national and legal right as long as the [Israeli] occupation persists”.
That right “cannot be relinquished until our full national rights are restored, foremost among them the establishment of a fully sovereign, independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital”, it said.
Witkoff met the Israeli captives’ families in Tel Aviv on Saturday, one day after he visited a US and Israeli-backed aid distribution site run by the controversial GHF in Gaza.
More than 1,300 Palestinians have been killed trying to get food at GHF-run sites since the group began operating in the bombarded Palestinian enclave in May, the United Nations said earlier this week.
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