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, where a starvation crisis has killed scores of people in recent days.
Hamas had earlier slammed the US envoy’s trip as a “staged show” aimed at misleading the public about the situation in the enclave, where an Israeli blockade has spurred a starvation crisis and fuelled global condemnation.
More than 1,300 Palestinians also have been killed trying to get food at GHF-run sites since the group began operating in the bombarded Palestinian territory in May, the United Nations said earlier this week.
But the Trump administration has stood firmly behind GHF despite the killings and growing criticism of the group’s operations in Gaza. In June, Washington announced that it approved $30m to support GHF.
Witkoff’s comments on disarmament also come amid a widening international push to recognise a Palestinian state amid the scenes of starvation in Gaza.
The United Kingdom announced at a two-day United Nations conference in New York this week that it may follow France in recognising a Palestinian state in September.
Echoing an earlier statement by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Foreign Secretary David Lammy said London would proceed with recognition if Israel did not meet certain conditions, including implementing a ceasefire in Gaza.
The UN meeting also saw 17 countries, plus the European Union and the Arab League, back a seven-page text on reviving a two-state solution to the conflict.
The text called on Hamas to “end its rule in Gaza and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority, with international engagement and support, in line with the objective of a sovereign and independent Palestinian State”.
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