Senior Hamas official assails Board of Peace envoy for conditioning reconstruction on disarmament
Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim lays into Board of Peace High Representative Nickolay Mladenov for his remarks at the UN Security Council earlier this week in which he urged the international community to pressure Hamas to disarm.
“Mladenov attempted to be ‘more royal than the king himself,’” Naim says in a statement, taking issue with the Board of Peace envoy’s conditioning of the IDF withdrawal from Gaza and reconstruction efforts in the Strip on Hamas’s disarmament.
In the terror group’s first response to Mladenov’s revelation of the principles in the disarmament proposal that mediators submitted to Hamas earlier this month, Naim claims that this conditionality goes against previous understandings.
Mladenov “is attempting to reverse the course of events in a manner that serves the agendas of the occupation, while completely overlooking the fact that the occupation has failed to implement *any* part of the first phase of the agreement, nor has it offered *any* guarantees regarding the fulfillment of future commitments,” Naim writes.
Mladenov “is threatening the Palestinians with a return to war, acting on behalf of Netanyahu and his fascist government, rather than truly serving as an envoy for a board that purports to be the Board of Peace,” the Hamas official continues.
Naim also takes issue with Mladenov for refraining from blaming either side for ceasefire violation, as 750 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli strikes since the truce was announced in October, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants.
Naim claims Mladenov is seeking to “appease the Americans and the Israelis.”
“Enough is enough. This approach has yielded nothing but catastrophes, emboldening the Israelis in their brutality and fascism and failed to deliver any measure of security or stability for anyone—whether within the region or beyond,” Naim adds.