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.”
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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.
Gaza’s then-Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, right, sitting next to senior Fatah official Azzam al-Ahmad during a press conference at Haniyeh’s house in Shati Refugee Camp, in the northern Gaza Strip, April 23, 2014. (Adel Hana/AP)
“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 Monday that he expects Hamas to be given an ultimatum on its disarmament “in the coming days.” He noted the ultimatum would be “not very long” in duration, and that it would be made by Washington, not Israel.
Last week, Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs, a senior adviser to Netanyahu, said that Hamas will have a 60-day period to disarm, a condition given by the White House, and “we are respecting that.”
In his Monday interview, Ahmed assailed as a “false pretense” the peace plan’s stipulation that the Palestinian Authority must reform itself before it can take control of Gaza.
The reforms that the US is demanding — including changes to the PA’s anti-Israel school curriculum and a complete halt to monthly stipends to prisoners, including terrorists, and to families of slain attackers, dubbed “pay-to-slay” — are “impossible” to implement, said Ahmed. He claimed that the requested changes to the school curriculum include the removal of the Palestinian flag and the word “Palestine” from textbooks.
“We believe the primary goal of these demands is to waste time,” said Ahmed.
He added that the PLO believes that the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023, “was a strategic error that inflicted immense damage on Gaza.” Ahmed rejected the claim that the attack breathed new life into the Palestinian issue. The October 7 invasion of southern Israel killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and triggered the Gaza war, which was halted by the US-brokered ceasefire in October 2025.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich heads a Religious Zionist party faction meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem, February 23, 2026. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Separately, Ahmed said the PLO is “in constant national talks with [Hamas] on fulfilling the requirements to join the organization.”
Under the Palestinian Authority’s recently unveiled provisional constitution, the PLO is the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and the PA adheres to the PLO’s commitments, which include recognition of Israel.
The PLO recognized Israel as part of the 1993 Oslo Accords, which established the PA as a body to administer Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and which Hamas and numerous other Palestinian factions have rejected.
In a move seen as preventing Hamas and other non-PLO factions from running in future elections — including municipal elections slated for April — PA President Mahmoud Abbas in January signed a decree requiring candidates to sign a statement accepting the PLO’s “national program.”
Speaking to Shorouk, Ahmed said “there was an error in the law,” adding that it was agreed that even parties opposed to the PLO could run in the April municipal elections, because those elections were about “providing services, not political work.” But the requirement would still hold for legislative elections, whose date is still not set, he said.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah, December 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser, Pool)
A senior Palestinian official told The Times of Israel that despite Ahmed’s senior position in the PLO, his comments do not reflect the stances of the umbrella Palestinian political body nor the PA.
The official noted that PA President Mahmoud Abbas has long called for Hamas to disarm and accused Ahmed of “electioneering” ahead of the Fatah central committee election in May.
The US-brokered ceasefire plan reached in October foresees the demilitarization of Gaza, including the disarmament of Hamas, along with a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Strip. However, implementation of the plan has remained unclear, with Israeli officials increasingly believing that stripping Hamas of its weapons will be impossible without the Israel Defense Forces taking action.
In the meantime, the Israeli military is drawing up plans for a renewed offensive in the Gaza Strip to disarm the terror group by force.
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