Dada El-Kurd

Now, Hamas, for its part, claims it never agreed to disarm.

In an interview with Dropsite News in December 2025, senior Hamas leader Khaled Mishal said that while Hamas is open to, quote, freezing or storing its defensive weapons, it wouldn't disarm unless it was in the, quote, context of establishing a Palestinian army or security force capable of defending itself from Israeli aggression.

Hamas has claimed that it only has a mandate to negotiate a ceasefire, an exchange of captives, and that every other issue needs to be handled through some sort of consensus process involving the other Palestinian political factions.

And in that same interview, Mishal rejected the idea of an international security force disarming them, saying that, quote, we accept them on the borders as separation forces between the Palestinian side and the Israeli side, not as forces deployed inside Gaza, as was intended for them and as Netanyahu wants, for them to clash with Palestinians and disarm them, end quote.

So speaking at an Al Jazeera forum on February 8th, the same person, Khaled Mishal, reiterated this argument, saying that the calls for Hamas's disarmament is not an international demand, but an Israeli dictate being pushed onto Washington.

He also said that calls to disarm Palestinians while the occupation continues would, quote, leave Gaza defenseless against Israel's overwhelming military power and exterminationist agenda.

As Dropsite News reported on their social media, quote, Mishal acknowledged the need for a pragmatic post-war framework to enable reconstruction and prevent a return to fighting, but explained that it could not be built on total disarmament.

So with that as an introduction, I wanted to take this episode to talk about what Palestinians think of disarmament and broadly and more generally armed tactics.

And when I say Palestinians, I hope it's clear I don't just mean Hamas.

I know that comes as a shock to some, but Palestinians aren't monolithic.

And there has been a great deal of debate since the October 7th attacks by Hamas on the role of armed tactics, armed groups, especially in the absence of national institutions or functioning national liberation movements.

In December of last year, 2025, the New Arab hosted a very interesting debate between different Palestinian representatives of Hamas, Fatah, the party of the Palestinian Authority, and a human rights activist and writer.

And they hosted this in Gaza, literally on the grounds of the bombed out al-Shifa hospital.

And they've debated some key questions.

For example, who has the right to decide war and peace for Palestinians?

How can Palestinians understand October 7th?

Does Hamas need to disarm?

Who should govern Gaza?

And you know what, this may come as a shock to both the American left and the American right, but the Palestinian speakers at this interview did not all agree with each other.

So I'm going to give a brief rundown of what this panel discussed.