Hamas rejects Netanyahu aide’s 60-day ultimatum for group to disarm

Al Jazeera :

Hamas has rejected remarks by an Israeli government official calling for the Gaza-based group to disarm in 60 days and threatening to resume Israel’s genocidal war if it fails to comply.

Senior Hamas official Mahmoud Mardawi told Al Jazeera Mubasher on Monday that he had no knowledge of such a demand.

“Statements made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu … and through the media are merely threats with no basis in the ongoing negotiations”, Al Jazeera Arabic cited him as saying.

Mardawi’s comments come after Israeli Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs, during a conference in Jerusalem on Monday, threatened to renew the genocidal war on Gaza if Hamas failed to disarm in 60 days, local media outlet the Times of Israel reported.

A top aide to Netanyahu, Fuchs claimed that the two-month period was requested by the United States administration. “We are respecting that,” he said.

Without confirming when the ultimatum would exactly start, Fuchs said it might begin with the February 19 meeting of US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace – a Washington-backed plan for the reconstruction of Gaza.

“We will evaluate it,” Fuchs said. “If it works, great. If not, then the IDF [Israeli army] will have to complete the mission.”

Hamas’s Mardawi told Al Jazeera Mubasher that any threat to renew the war would have “serious repercussions for the region” and stressed that “the Palestinian people will not surrender”, AJA reported.

The second phase of the “ceasefire” agreement began in mid-January, in which the US says it will tackle the disarmament of Hamas and the deployment of an international peacekeeping force. Hamas has refused to give up arms as long as Israel continues to occupy Gaza.

Earlier this month, Hamas’s political leader abroad, Khaled Meshaal, rejected calls to disarm Palestinian factions in Gaza, arguing that stripping weapons from an occupied people would turn them into “an easy victim to be eliminated”.

Israeli genocide in Gaza since October 2023 has killed more than 72,000 people, including thousands of children.

Israel’s assaults have continued despite a US-brokered “ceasefire” that began in October, with more than 600 Palestinians killed since it took effect. According to authorities in Gaza, Israel has violated the “ceasefire” 1,520 times.

In addition to the near-daily killing of Palestinians, Israel also severely restricts quantities of food, medicine, medical supplies, shelter materials and prefabricated houses entering Gaza, where some two million Palestinians – including 1.5 million displaced – live in catastrophic conditions.