So Much Talking

As the US and Iran get ready for talks that will go nowhere and waste time as protesters are begging for help, The US thinks that Hamas will disarm and surrender as they agreed to do. In an article from Gatestone Institute we see that these terrorists have no intention to do either:

Hamas is clearly unfazed by Trump's repeated threats that it must give up its weapons. The terror organization maintains that Israel is the one that needs to be disarmed. Hamas has become used to Trump's recurring threats over the past year -- especially with Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia on Trump's new Board of Peace to make sure that Hamas is left untouched. Hamas is apparently convinced that Trump's threats are just a means of scaring the terror group.

The problem they say is that Trump is reading the situation incorrectly:

Trump seems to regard the Gaza Strip as a real estate enterprise that can be managed by earnest investors, politicians and technocrats, and not as a terror hub for Hamas and other Islamist Jihadists committed to destroying Israel and replacing it with an Islamist state.

The article believes as I and others do that the Arab nations won’t lift a finger to oppose Hamas and will instead represent them in an effort to allow them to survive. To think otherwise is foolishness:

"The composition of the Gaza administration committee is also flawed, as all its members are loyal to the Palestinian Authority, masquerading as technocrats and professionals." — Yassin Ezzedine, Palestinian political analyst, felesteen.news, January 18, 2026.

Another problem is that Hamas fully intends to oppose and even kill members of the International Stabilization Force. The need for improving the lives of Gazans is second to destroying Israel. So, what is the real position of Hamas on disarming? They want Israel to disarm, not themselves. They see Trump’s many threats as simply scare tactics and nothing more:

In response to Trump's latest call for Hamas to disarm, Hazem Qassem, a spokesman for the terror group in the Gaza Strip, told Qatar's Al-Jazeera TV network, the unofficial mouthpiece of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, "The weapons of the resistance are a response to the [Israeli] occupation."

"The real weapons," he added, "that should be talked about are the Israeli weapons."

All of these terrorists want only one thing:

Hamas, which describes itself as "one of the wings of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine," remains committed to the teachings of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, who is quoted in the terror group's 1988 charter as saying: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."

Only For Show

Thinking that Hamas will ever disarm completely is the stuff of make believe:

It is possible that Hamas may put on a show by handing over some of its light weapons to impress Trump and his Board of Peace. Hamas, however, will never surrender all its weapons, especially the thousands of missiles and rockets it manufactured and stockpiled over the past two decades. The terror group knows that the moment it loses all its weapons, it will cease to exist both as a political and military entity. It needs the weapons to maintain control over the residents of the Gaza Strip and protect its future viability, its members and leaders, especially against its political rivals in Gaza, such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad, as well as the Palestinian Authority.

In these negotiations they are all in for rebuilding Gaza, but not disarming:

Hamas wants the Board of Peace to focus only on the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, not security-related issues, such as the "demilitarization" of the Gaza Strip. According to Qassem, the Hamas spokesman, the Board of Peace should compel Israel to reopen the border crossings of the Gaza Strip (with Israel and Egypt) and lift restrictions imposed on the entry of humanitarian and medical aid. Qassem also stressed the need "to mobilize political, financial and economic support to launch a genuine reconstruction that is appropriate to the reality of Gaza, the culture of its inhabitants and their political goals, without neglecting the basic political and national rights of the Palestinian people."

As mentioned above, Hamas loves that Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are playing a role in the future management of the Gaza Strip since they already support Hamas and will not fight against them. They are already trying to get the demand of full disarming dropped from the deal:

Another Hamas official, Taher a-Nunu, also rejected Trump's call on the terror group to give up its weapons:

"The Palestinian people live under [Israeli] occupation, and according to international law and humanitarian law, it is the right of peoples under occupation to resist until they gain their freedom... If the occupation ends, there is no need for resistance or weapons, but so long as the occupation exists, the real problem is its existence, not the tools of resistance against its weapons, but rather in the continuation of the Israeli occupation."

They also won’t disarm until Israel doesn’t exist:

"The essence of the crisis in Palestine," according to a-Nunu, "does not lie in the resistance's weapons, but rather in the continuation of the Israeli occupation."

No Israeli occupation existed in Gaza in the first place:

Reminder: There was no Israeli "occupation" in the Gaza Strip ever since 2005, when Israel forcibly removed all 8,000 Jews from the Gaza Strip to make room for the exclusive use of the Palestinians – until October 7, 2023, when Hamas carried out its invasion of Israel. That day, Hamas slaughtered more than 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals and wounded thousands of others. It is also worth noting that Hamas's October 7 massacre targeted towns and cities inside the areas of Israel that had been agreed upon by the Palestinians in the 1993 Oslo Accord, not settlements in the West Bank. The Jews who were murdered, tortured, and kidnapped that day were not "settlers." They were ordinary Israeli citizens living in Israel proper.

And About The Board Of Peace

The Gazans and Arabs are all on the same page about it:

Many Palestinians and Arabs share Hamas's views on the Board of Peace, especially on not permitting disarmament. Writers, academics, journalists, and political activists have been denouncing the Board of Peace as a new "international trusteeship project aimed at re-engineering Gaza's political and security administration and paving the way for the disarmament of the resistance."

Don’t just take the article’s word on it. Listen to the Gazans themselves:

Palestinian activist Moaath Khalaf described the council as an extension of colonial projects:

"The Gaza Board of Peace can be conventionally called the Gaza Colonization Council, and the mission is difficult to complete."

Palestinian political analyst Yassin Ezzedine wrote that the nature of the board reflects its true objectives:

"Trump announces the formation of the Board of Peace. Its composition is flawed, which is to be expected. It is headed by [former UN envoy Nikolay] Mladenov, and its members include [Steve] Witkoff, [Jared] Kushner, an Emirati minister, an American rabbi, and a Cypriot-Israeli businessman. The composition of the Gaza administration committee is also flawed, as all its members are loyal to the Palestinian Authority, masquerading as technocrats and professionals."

Another calls the board a disaster:

Palestinian poet and journalist Ali Jahiz described the Board of Peace as "[A] major catastrophe... a peace board for the occupation of Gaza and the disarmament of the resistance. It is headed by the criminal Trump, and consists of bodies led by Zionists, with nominal participation from regional countries. In short: A dangerous occupation with multiple fronts."

They see the members of the board as being chosen to give Israel what it wants:

Several Palestinian terror factions, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) also expressed reservations about Trump's Board of Peace. The factions claimed that the selection of the board members took into consideration only Israeli interests and demands. PIJ spokesman Mohammed al-Hajj Musa said: "The names serve only the interests of the [Israeli] occupation and the selection of members was based on specific Israeli criteria."

As alluded to earlier, Hamas that the ISF or any force “that comes to carry out tasks on behalf of the [Israeli] occupation will be treated as an occupying force."

In other words, they will kill them on site. The article sums things up this way:

Hamas's refusal to disarm, its opposition to the Board of Peace, and threats to kill members of the International Stabilization Force signal that the terror group and its supporters have total contempt for Trump or anyone who seeks a better life for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. For the Islamist terrorists, the Jihad to destroy Israel takes precedence over reconstruction, economic prosperity, everything.

I can’t see how the Trump plan will have any chance at success now. In my opinion this ends only one way: the Israel Defense Force goes in and finishes Hamas off. When they’re in the process of doing that, Iran and all of its proxies will throw all they have left at Israel culminating in the events of the Psalm 83 war just as prophesied. Fireworks, not diplomacy are up next.