For months, Hamas leaders defended the militant group’s decision to launch the attack on October 7, 2023 against Israel, even if it sparked a devastating Israeli offensive which killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza and reduces the territory in tickets.
Hamas has declared the “victory” over Israel, and some of its officials have promised that their fighters will achieve more October 7 attacks in the future.
But now, one of the main officials of Hamas publicly expresses reserves on the assault, which also addressed a humanitarian crisis which has moved nearly two million and has led to critical shortages of food and health care.
Mousa Abu Marzouk, the head of the Hamas foreign relations office, based in Qatar, said in an interview with the New York Times that he would not have supported the attack if he had known the ravages that it would make on Gaza . Knowing the consequences, he said, would have made “impossible” for him to support the assault.
Mr. Abu Marzouk said that it was not informed of the specific plans of the October 7 attack, in which around 1,200 people were killed and around 250 hostage, but that he and other Hamas political leaders had approved his strategy global to attack Israel militarily.
“If we expected that what had happened happened, there would not have been happening on October 7”, with regard to worried, he said.
He also suggested that there was a certain will within Hamas to negotiate the future of the group’s arms in Gaza – which was a point of collision in negotiations with Israel – taking a position than other managers Hamas have rejected. A compromise could help Hamas and Israel to avoid a renewal of the war, according to analysts. Israel said he wanted Hamas to dismantle his military capabilities.
Abu Marzouk, 74, the first chief of the Hamas political office in the 1990s, made these comments in a telephone interview on Friday.
It is not known to what extent the opinions of Mr. Abu Marzouk on October 7 are shared by other leaders of Hamas, or if they were an attempt to influence negotiations with Israel or to put pressure on the other leaders in breast of the militant group. The other leaders of Hamas, in particular those who are closely linked to Iran and the Lebanese militant group of Hezbollah, tended to take a more difficult line.
In a statement published after publication, Hamas said the comments that the times attributed to Mr. Abu Marzouk were “incorrect” and out of context. He also said that the senior Hamas official called on the attack on October 7 “the expression of our people’s right to the resistance and its rejection of the headquarters, the occupation and the colonial building”.
The press release added that Mr. Abu Marzouk affirmed the position of the group according to which “the weapons of the resistance” cannot be abandoned as long as “there is an occupation of our land”.
His comments suggest that there are differences between Hamas officials on the party line on October 7 and its consequences. They also indicate that the frustrations of the Palestinians in Gaza who say that the attack made them undergo extraordinary sufferings has a certain impact within the leaders of Hamas.
The comments of Mr. Abu Marzouk were similar to those manufactured by Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, in the aftermath of the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. The extent of destruction in this conflict led Mr. Nasrallah grant That his group would not have kidnapped and killed several Israeli soldiers at the time if it had known that it would trigger such a strong answer.
In the coming days, Israel and Hamas should start a discussion on the second phase of the ceasefire in Gaza, which calls for a permanent end of the fighting, a full Israeli withdrawal, and the release of more hostages Israelis and Palestinian and Palestinian and Palestinian prisoners. But delays in the start of these talks associated with disputes on the implementation of the first phase have strengthened the fears that the truce can collapse and that the war can restart.
Abu Marzouk, who has spent years living in the United States, has long been considered one of the most pragmatic figures in Hamas. The war demanded a heavy price on his family, with his 77 -year -old brother, Yousef, killed in the fighting.
“It is not a nihilist,” said Stanley Cohen, a long -time lawyer and friend of Mr. Abu Marzouk based in New York. “He would not support any action which, according to him, would lead to unprecedented reprisals by anyone on the people.”
Mr. Abu Marzouk said Hamas’ survival in the war against Israel was herself a “kind of victory”. He also compared Hamas to an average fighting person fighting Mike Tyson, the former heavyweight boxing champion: if the unspecified novice survives the punches of Mr. Tyson, people would say that he was victorious, a- he said.
In absolute terms, he said that it would be “unacceptable” to claim that Hamas has won, in particular given the scale of what Israel inflicted on Gaza.
“We are talking about a party that has lost control of itself and took revenge against everything,” he said, referring to Israel. “This is by no means a victory.”
The Israeli army said it had led its air and land campaigns in Gaza in accordance with international law, and that it made attacks on Hamas, that the United States and other countries have appointed a terrorist group. But legal experts accused Israel of using the Force in a way that has resulted in the death of too many civilians.
Mr. Abu Marzouk also suggested that there was a certain opening in Hamas leaders to negotiate the future of the group’s arms in Gaza, a thorny question which, according to other Hamas officials, is prohibited.
“We are ready to talk about each problem,” he said, when he asked him about weapons. “Any problem that is on the table, we have to talk about it.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel insisted that his country will not end the war with Hamas without dismantling the group’s governance and military capacities. While Hamas expressed its preparation to concede civil governance in Gaza, it refused to give up its weapons.
The remarks of Mr. Abu Marzouk seemed to contradict those of Osama Hamdan, another official of Hamas, who told a conference in Doha, in Qatar, in the middle of this month that “the weapons of the resistance” were not To be discussed, seeming to exclude a compromise.
Asked about Mr. Hamdan’s statements, Abu Marzouk said no one could define the agenda.
Ibrahim Madhoun, an analyst close to Hamas, said that there were several opinions in the group on important issues, but when his institutions made a decision, everyone was behind.
Since the cease-fire came into force on January 19, Hamas fighters have evolved around Gaza with rifles-sending a message to Israel, the international community and the Palestinians that the group was still in control.
Mr. Abu Marzouk refused to answer specific questions about possible compromises on the issue of weapons of Hamas. These compromises could include storage of Hamas in weapons in supervised international facilities, agree to give up the reconstruction of its network of tunnels and its rocket arsenal, or to stop the recruitment of combatants. Disarmament, according to experts, is unlikely.
While the talks during the second phase of the ceasefire were maintained, Israeli and American officials have more and more spoke of the extension of the first phase.
Releasing other hostages and prisoners during an extension of the first phase, added Mr. Abu Marzouk, could be discussed. But he said that, in all circumstances, Hamas would demand a lot more prisoners in exchange for each hostage because the group considers the remaining Israeli hostages as soldiers. He mentioned 500 and 1,000 prisoners as possible figures for each hostage.
During the first phase, hundreds of Palestinian prisoners were released, but the number of prisoners released per hostage generally did not exceed 50.
Abu Marzouk said Hamas was also open to the release of all hostages at the same time, if Israel was willing to release the thousands of Palestinians in his prisons, end the war and withdraw from Gaza.
“We are ready to have a full deal,” he said.
Israeli officials previously rejected the proposals to exchange all hostages for all prisoners.
Abu Bakr Bashir helped relate to this article.
