A senior Hamas official told Saudi Arabia’s Al Hadath news site that the terror group does not intend to assume administrative control of the Gaza Strip after the war. But despite signaling willingness to step back from governance, the group doubled down on its core demands — refusing to disarm, insisting on a full Israeli withdrawal, and warning of consequences if Israel proceeds with deeper incursions into Gaza.

“The problem has never been weapons,” the unnamed official claimed, arguing that the real issue is what he called “Israeli aggression.” He maintained that Hamas and the Palestinian people are under “unprecedented pressure,” but asserted the group is “dealing with all initiatives and pressures positively to end the aggression.”

The official categorically ruled out disarmament until Israel ends its “occupation” and agrees to the creation of “an independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.”

While rejecting any role in administering Gaza, the official simultaneously called for “open, unregulated” border crossings, but said Hamas does not want to oversee aid or crossing management. Instead, he demanded that the responsibility be handed over to a joint Palestinian-Egyptian authority, as he claimed was the case before Israel’s current military operation.

The comments come amid intensifying tensions over Israel’s stated goal to dismantle Hamas militarily and politically, and to reassert control over key areas of the Gaza Strip. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said that Israel will not accept any Hamas involvement in postwar Gaza — a stance Hamas is now attempting to co-opt by preemptively stepping away from governance, while keeping its weapons and ideological aims intact.

In a direct threat to Israeli hostages held in Gaza, the Hamas official warned that a full-scale Israeli reoccupation of the Strip would “expose the lives of Israeli prisoners to unprecedented danger.” He attempted to equate the hostages — civilians and soldiers abducted during Hamas’s October 7 massacre — with Palestinian security prisoners held by Israel for terrorism-related offenses.

“Hamas understands the feelings of the families of the Israeli prisoners,” the official said, “because every Palestinian home has a prisoner in the occupation’s jails.”

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