Palestinian journalists call upon Hamas to free the Israeli hostages, to step down from power, dismantle its military wing and to permit the Palestinian Authority to control Gaza.
By Rachel Avraham
According to a recent report published by MEMRI, “Palestinian Authority (PA) dailies Al-Ayyam and Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, which are published in the West Bank, continue to be filled with articles critical of the Hamas movement, written in increasingly harsher tones. These harsher tones have been apparent recently in a switch from holding Hamas responsible for the Gaza war and its consequences, to an unambiguous call to Hamas to end the war by making a deal that will comprise freeing the Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners; agreeing to dismantle its military wing and lay down its weapons; and the transfer of power in the Gaza Strip to the PA.”
MEMRI continued, “The articles urge Hamas to acknowledge that it won’t be possible to reconstruct Gaza as long as it remains in power and as long as its military wing exists, and that dismantling its government and surrendering its weapons are necessary steps, not only to end the war, but also to circumvent President Trump’s plan to resettle the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. They write that abandoning the armed struggle would not be an act of surrender by the Palestinian national movement, because it could carry on its struggle in other ways, and Hamas could even continue to be active in the PA as a political party, rather than as a military organization.”
For example, MEMRI noted that “on February 13, 2025, in his column in the Al-Hayat Al-Jadida daily, Bassem Barhoum wrote: “… There is no room in the future for armed factions, but [only] for political parties that operate in the framework of the political system of the PA, based on the principle of one gun [i.e. monopoly on holding weapons] which is the sole property of the government, which does not belong to any single faction, but to the Palestinian people by means of the ballot box… It is not possible to begin to [implement] any program or to propose an alternative for [Trump’s] displacement plan, without Hamas withdrawing from the [governing] arena in Gaza, and in the future, it will rebuild itself as a political movement that operates within a framework of the democratic process.”
According to him, “The meaning of the withdrawal is that Hamas will dismantle its military wing, sever all its connections to external [i.e. Iranian] agendas, and declare to the world that the PA is the authority in the Gaza Strip. Implementing this does not signify surrender, but an attempt to rescue the Palestinian people and to prevent the elimination of its national issue. Actually, it’s a way to block the path of displacement, and if we manage to stop all that, then in fact, the Palestinian people will have won…””
In his March 3, 2025 column in the Al-Ayyam daily, Ashraf Al-Ajrami, a Fatah member and former Minister for Prisoner Affairs in the PA, stressed that “a deal that would include the release of the Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and the dismantling of the Hamas military wing would make it possible to end the war in Gaza, and also enable Hamas to continue to exist as a political party. He wrote: “…The time has come for the Hamas movement to reassess reality and consider the conditions that currently pertain, because it no longer has the strength to maneuver so as to remain in power or to hold on to its weapons, because this will lead only to the continuation of the war… It must strive for a deal in which it will give up all the Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and an end to the war, in the framework of agreement to lay down its arms.””
In a recent column from March 4, 2025, in the Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam, “Muhammad Abd Al-Hamid urged the Hamas movement to emulate Abdullah Ocalan, (currently imprisoned in Turkey) the head of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), who called on his supporters to abandon their armed struggle. In another column, which appeared on March 25, 2025, Abd Al-Hamid asserted that this is the way to end the war and that this step does not mean the surrender of the Palestinian national movement, which will continue to strive for independence in a non-violent manner.”
He wrote: “…The only opportunity by means of which the Palestinian people and its political movement will manage to contribute to stopping the bloodshed… will be by means of a clear declaration, with the participation of all the Palestinian political forces or most of them, which will obligate them to move from an armed struggle and armed resistance to a non-violent political and popular struggle. The declaration would include an admission of the failure of armed resistance, but would not comprise surrender. During the course of their liberation, all the liberation movements and the peoples moved from armed struggle to non-violent struggle, and many times achieved their freedom and independence in this manner… Our conflict with the occupation will not achieve its legitimate goals by means of wars of military confrontation or by means of a decisive [military] blow, but rather by means of gaining points and their accumulation over time…”
Photo from Fars Media Corporation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas#/media/File:2013_Izz_ad-Din_al-Qassam_Brigades_exercise_(8).jpg
