https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21572/hamas-weapons
Hamas wants to keep its weapons so that it could kill even those Jews who “hide behind stones and trees.” Hamas also wants to hold on to its weapons so that it can continue to oppress Palestinians who dare to speak out against the terrorist group. This old but reliable method of control is how Hamas has managed to remain in power for the past two decades.
Any deal that allows Hamas to keep its arsenal of weapons is simply a green light to the Islamists to pursue their jihad against Israel. It is a waste of time to demand that Hamas just be removed from power in the Gaza Strip.
The Trump administration actually needs to place the issue of disarming Hamas and all the Palestinian terrorist groups not among its demands, but at the top.
As the war in the Gaza Strip is about to enter its 20th month, the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group has once again repeated its refusal to disarm. It says the weapons are needed to continue its fight against Israel. Those who believe that Hamas would ever agree to lay down its weapons are living in a dream world. There is, unfortunately, only one way to convince Hamas to disarm: military force.
Recently, two senior Hamas officials, Mahmoud Mardawi and Bassam Naim, announced their group’s absolute rejection of any proposal related to laying down its weapons. They said that other Palestinian terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip also reject any plan to disarm.
“The [Palestinian] resistance’s weapons represent the life of the Palestinian people and cannot be relinquished under any circumstances,” Mardawi said in a statement to Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV station. Hamas, he added, “will not negotiate over its weapons, or those who carry them, at any stage. The mere entry into a discussion about this issue is completely unacceptable.”
Naim also told the TV station that Hamas would not lay down its weapons and that the “resistance will continue as long as there is an [Israeli] occupation.”