Qatar says Hamas will not be part of the future governance of Gaza, but the group has not yet committed to unconditional disarmament.
“Hamas’s response to us was very clear…they are willing to give up the governance,” Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said on Wednesday at a Council on Foreign Relations event in New York City.
“The weapons question, from their (Hamas’s) perspective, this is an obligation on all the factions, not on Hamas only. We are trying to push them to get to a point where they acknowledge that they need to disarm,” he added.
“We need to make sure that the Palestinians are safe and the Israelis are safe. That is the whole purpose of the decommissioning and disarmament,” he said.
Qatar is one of the guarantors, along with the US, Turkey and Egypt, of the Gaza ceasefire that was signed earlier this month. The agreement has been marred by violations, including Israel’s refusal to open the Rafah border crossing and Israeli air strikes on the enclave.
