A senior Hamas leader is flatly rejecting the central pillar of President Donald Trump’s proposed Gaza ceasefire plan, warning that the terror group will not give up its weapons even under a long-term political agreement.

In a combative interview with Al Jazeera, Khaled Mashaal said Hamas may “store” its arsenal temporarily but will never agree to the full disarmament demanded by Washington, Arab mediators, and Israel as a condition for ending the war.

“The idea of total disarmament is unacceptable,” Mashaal said. “What is being proposed is a freeze, or storage… to provide guarantees against any military escalation from Gaza.”

Mashaal insisted weapons are essential to Palestinian survival, invoking the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre that followed the PLO’s expulsion from Lebanon.

“When the Palestinian is disarmed… massacres follow,” he said. “Disarmament for a Palestinian means stripping away his very soul.”

Mashaal also rejected another core element of Trump’s plan: an International Stabilization Force that would govern Gaza after Hamas and the IDF withdraw. He called such a deployment an extension of “occupation.”

Still, he said Hamas would accept foreign forces stationed only along Gaza’s borders, citing the UN’s peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon as a viable model.

Mashaal used the interview to again glorify Hamas’s October 7 massacre in southern Israel, claiming the attack “revived” global support for the Palestinian cause and asserting, without evidence, that “51 percent of American youth” support not just Palestine but Hamas itself.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)