Khaled Meshaal, a senior Hamas leader, told an audience in Doha on Feb. 8 that the movement will not surrender its weapons or accept external governance of the Gaza Strip. Quoting Meshaal, Agence France-Presse reported that Hamas refuses to have “resistance, resistors and their weapons” declared illegal and insisted that “where there is occupation there will be resistance,” framing armed struggle as the right of an oppressed people.
Meshaal’s remarks set him directly against Israel’s stated preconditions for reconstruction. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a meeting with a U.S. presidential special envoy on Feb. 3 that Gaza must be fully demilitarized and Hamas disarmed before rebuilding begins, and that achieving Israel’s stated war objectives is a non‑negotiable precondition for any recovery of the enclave.
The stance articulated in Doha is echoed elsewhere among Palestinian armed groups: an Islamic Jihad official said on Feb. 4 that resistance factions had agreed to retain “the people’s weapons.” Scenes from Gaza underline the stakes — residents continued to sift through the rubble of air strikes as of Jan. 31, demonstrating the scale of destruction that any reconstruction effort must confront.
The clash over whether Gaza will be disarmed and who will govern it goes beyond immediate battlefield calculations. International donors and mediators such as Qatar, Egypt and the United Nations face a dilemma: provide urgent humanitarian relief and reconstruction assistance while trying not to underwrite a security vacuum that Israel says would threaten its safety, or insist on disarmament criteria that Hamas and allied groups reject and that would likely delay reconstruction indefinitely.
The political consequences are far‑reaching. Hamas’s insistence on retaining arms preserves its leverage inside Gaza and its claim to represent Palestinian resistance, complicating efforts by regional states to normalize relations with Israel or to craft a durable ceasefire. Conversely, Israel’s uncompromising demand for demilitarization reflects both security concerns and domestic political pressures, and increases the likelihood that reconstruction and governance arrangements will remain stalled unless a new, broadly acceptable compromise is brokered.