The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) does not consider Hamas a terror group, rejects demands to disarm it, and will let it run in the Palestinian Authority’s municipal elections in April, PLO Secretary General Azzam al-Ahmed said this week.

“All talk of disarming Hamas and their being a terrorist organization is unacceptable to us,” Ahmed told Egyptian outlet Shorouk News in an interview published Monday.

His remarks ran contrary to the insistence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump that the terror group give up its weapons in the near future as part of the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire. Trump has repeatedly asserted that Hamas “promised” to lay down its arms, and has threatened the terror group over the issue.

However, at least publicly, Hamas has not agreed to disarm.

“We’ve never regarded them as a terrorist organization,” Ahmed said. “They are part of the Palestinian national fabric.”

For a similar reason, the PLO also rejects the demand in Trump’s Gaza peace plan that Hamas play no part in governing the Strip, said Ahmed.

Ahmed claims that the Trump administration rejects any role for Palestinians in governing the Strip.

“They don’t want Palestinians generally,” Ahmed said, pointing to the demand that Hamas play no role in Gaza and to the absence of Palestinian members on the US-led Board of Peace, which is supposed to facilitate Gaza’s reconstruction.

As for the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza — the group of independent Palestinian technocrats meant to oversee the Strip’s reconstruction — Ahmed said it’s clear the US, with Israel’s support, wants to “take control” of the mission, given Washington’s “empty talk” of rebuilding Gaza as a “riviera” dotted by skyscrapers — a plan Trump championed early last year but which he hasn’t mentioned recently.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said........

© The Times of Israel