Hamas will not surrender its weapons or accept foreign oversight in Gaza, senior leader Khaled Meshal said in Doha, rejecting U.S. and Israeli demands as a U.S.-brokered Gaza cease-fire moves into a phase that envisions demilitarization and an Israeli withdrawal.
“Criminalizing the resistance, its weapons, and those who carried it out is something we should not accept,” Meshal told a conference in the Qatari capital. “As long as there is occupation, there is resistance. Resistance is a right of peoples under occupation … something nations take pride in.”
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The remarks rebuff a core element of the cease-fire’s second phase, which foresees disarmament in the enclave. Hamas has repeatedly called disarmament a red line, though it has signaled it could consider transferring weapons to a future Palestinian governing authority.
Israeli officials estimate Hamas retains roughly 20,000 fighters in Gaza and about 60,000 Kalashnikov rifles. The Islamist movement, which has long framed its struggle as resistance to Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, casts its arsenal as non-negotiable absent a political settlement on Palestinian terms.
Meshal’s comments land as a Palestinian technocratic committee prepares to assume day-to-day governance in the battered strip. The body’s mandate and authority, however, remain unsettled — particularly on whether and how it could confront the question of demilitarization.
Overseeing the transition is the so-called Board of Peace, an initiative launched by U.S. President Donald Trump. Initially conceived to monitor the truce and shepherd postwar reconstruction, the board’s remit has widened, prompting critics to warn it could evolve into a rival to the United Nations.
Trump unveiled the Board of Peace last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where leaders and officials from nearly two dozen countries signed its founding charter. Alongside it, the United States created a Gaza Executive Board — an advisory panel to the Palestinian technocratic committee — that includes U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, as well as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Meshal urged the board to adopt a “balanced approach” that accelerates reconstruction and allows aid to flow to Gaza’s roughly 2.2 million residents, while making clear Hamas would resist any external control over Palestinian territory. “We adhere to our national principles and reject the logic of guardianship, external intervention, or the return of a mandate in any form,” he said. “Palestinians are to govern Palestinians. Gaza belongs to the people of Gaza and to Palestine. We will not accept foreign rule.”
The governance debate is unfolding amid fragile calm along Gaza’s southern frontier. Children and patients have gathered near the Rafah crossing as limited evacuations and humanitarian transfers trickle through, underscoring the stakes of reconstruction and the urgency of aid delivery under the cease-fire framework.
Whether the nascent administrative structures can reconcile international demands for demilitarization with Hamas’s categorical refusal remains a central test of the cease-fire’s second phase. For now, Meshal’s stance signals that any push to strip Gaza’s armed factions of their weapons — without a Palestinian-led political process acceptable to Hamas — is unlikely to gain traction.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
