The issue of disarmament has been one of the key stumbling blocks for the progression to the second phase of US President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan.<\/p>\n
Last week, a Hamas delegation met Egyptian, Qatari and Turkish mediators in Cairo to give its initial response to a proposal from the US-led Board of Peace for Palestinian groups to decommission their weapons.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, the spokesperson for Hamas’s military wing rejected any talk of disarmament before Israel fulfilled its commitments under the first phase of Trump’s plan.<\/p>\n
“We will not accept raising the issue of weapons in this crude manner,” said Abu Ubaida, whose namesake was killed in an Israeli strike last year.<\/p>\n
He added: “What the enemy failed to take from us by tanks and destruction, it will not take from us through politics or at the negotiating table.”<\/p>\n
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously warned Hamas that it will be disarmed “either the easy way or the hard way”.<\/p>\n
Abu Ubaida also linked Hamas’s fight in Gaza to the wider conflict between Israel and the US and Iran and its allies.<\/p>\n
He praised the missile, drone and rocket attacks on Israel by Iranian forces and Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, as an “extension” of what Hamas started on 7 October 2023.<\/p>\n
The Gaza war was triggered by the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel that day, when about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.<\/p>\n
Israel responded by launching a military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, during which more than 72,300 people have been killed, according to the territory’s health ministry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The issue of disarmament has been one of the key stumbling blocks for the progression to the second…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":516563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-516562","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}