WASHINGTON, February 27. /TASS/. The dispute over the disarmament of the radical Palestinian movement Hamas complicates the international community's efforts to extend the Gaza ceasefire agreement reached in January, The Washington Post reported.
Israel and Hamas seem "far from reaching an agreement to proceed to the second, decisive phase of the ceasefire, which would involve the release of all living Israeli hostages still held by Hamas, Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and a permanent end to the war," the newspaper said, adding that the main obstacle between the parties to the conflict remained the question of whether Hamas could "be persuaded, or pressured, to lay down its arms and leave Gaza."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long declared his war objective to be "annihilating" Hamas, The Washington Post noted. Against this background, his decision to cease hostilities before the radical movement agreed to disarm would anger his extreme far-right coalition partners, including Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and weaken Netanyahu's position as head of government.
For Hamas, in turn, disarmament would contradict its stated raison d’etre of waging armed struggle against Israel until it withdraws from all Palestinian territories, the paper emphasized. Thus, after senior Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzouk expressed readiness to discuss disarmament with the Israeli side, several other representatives of Hamas leadership issued statements rejecting his position. "The weapon of resistance is not open to debate or negotiation; it is sacred and cannot be relinquished," Suhail al-Hindi, a member of the movement's political bureau, told The Washington Post.
On February 24, Abu Marzouk said in an interview with The New York Times that there was some willingness within Hamas to negotiate the future of the group’s weapons in Gaza. According to him, the subject of negotiations should be "any issue that is put on the table." However, Abu Marzouk’s statements appeared to contradict those of Osama Hamdan, another Hamas official, who earlier said that the movement's disarmament was not up for discussion. Commenting on this, Abu Marzouk noted that no leader could set the agenda on their own. At the same time, the deputy head of the Hamas politburo declined to specify what possible compromises the movement might make on the issue of keeping its weapons in Gaza.
Gaza ceasefire agreement
Tensions escalated again in the Middle East on October 7, 2023, when militants from the Gaza Strip-based radical Palestinian movement Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israeli territory, killing residents of Israeli border settlements and taking hostages. Radicals called the attack a response to the Israeli authorities' actions against the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Israel announced a complete blockade of Gaza and began conducting retaliatory strikes on the enclave and parts of Lebanon and Syria, then initiated a military operation in Gaza.
On January 15, Israel and Hamas had reached an agreement to implement a ceasefire in Gaza and release hostages held in the enclave. The agreement, which includes three phases, entered into force on January 19. Early on February 27, the last exchange of the first phase took place. In total, during the first six weeks of ceasefire, Hamas released 25 living kidnapped Israeli people and returned the bodies of 8 dead hostages in exchange for some 1,700 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
Earlier, the Ynet website reported that Netanyahu would hold a February 27 meeting on the prospects for implementing the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire agreement after the 42 days of the first phase would expire on March 1. The news portal added that the participants in the meeting were also planning to decide whether Israel would send its negotiators in Cairo or Doha for consultations on the deal's second phase scheduled for next week. At the same time, The Financial Times wrote, citing sources, that Israel wanted an indefinite extension of the agreement's first phase instead of proceeding to the second stage, which was supposed to contribute to a resolution of the conflict.