Hamas was not the only terror group that attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. Several other Palestinian armed groups also took part in the assault, which resulted in the murder of 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals, the wounding of thousands, and the kidnapping of 251 people to the Gaza Strip.
Some Middle East experts and political analysts tend to forget that Hamas is not the only terror group operating inside the Gaza Strip. Among the other groups: Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Popular Resistance Committees, Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (affiliated with the Fatah faction headed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas), Palestinian Mujahideen Movement, and Palestinian Freedom Movement. Some of these groups were also involved in kidnapping and holding many of the Israeli and foreign hostages in the Gaza Strip.
In December 2023, senior Hamas official Musa Abu Marzouk confirmed that some of the hostages were being detained by "different factions" that had participated in the October 7 attack.
Members of these groups also participated in fighting Israel during the Gaza war, which began immediately after the massacres of October 7.
According to The New Arab media outlet:
"To support Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and despite any ideological or political differences, thousands of fighters from four other Palestinian factions have been fighting against the Israeli occupation forces in Gaza since October 7, 2023. These armed faction fighters are actively participating in attacks on invading Israeli ground troops, launching rockets at the Israeli towns and even holding some of the Israelis that were captured."
Since its violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Hamas has allowed all these terror groups to operate so long as they did not pose a threat to its rule.
In 2018, Hamas established the Joint Room for Palestinian Resistance Factions with the other groups to form a single front and command institution against Israel.
Ayman Nofal, a member of the General Military Council of the Izz a-Din Qassam Brigades, Hamas's military terrorist wing, told Qatar's Al-Jazeera television network on June 12, 2023 that the joint operations room was part of the "unity of the fronts and arenas" strategy, spearheaded by the Gaza Strip and its "resistance." He claimed that these groups believed their "struggle" for "the liberation of Palestine" and the removal of the "occupation" were necessitating resources and a united front. According to Nofal, at the heart of the "resistance axis and arenas" were Jerusalem and al-Aqsa Mosque, the central objective and motivation for their activities.
The continued presence of these terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip underscores the challenges facing the implementation of US President Donald J. Trump's 20-point plan for ending the Israel-Hamas war. The first phase of the plan calls for the release of all the hostages, alive and dead, and the suspension of Israeli military activities, within 72 hours. Hamas has yet to return the remains of three hostages: two Israelis and a Thai national.
The remaining phases of Trump's plan propose establishing a temporary transitional committee of technocrats and apolitical figures to govern the Gaza Strip with oversight, supervised by a new international transitional body called the Board of Peace.
The plan states:
" Hamas and other factions agree to not have any role in the governance of Gaza, directly, indirectly, or in any form.... There will be a process of demilitarization of Gaza under the supervision of independent monitors, which will include placing weapons permanently beyond use through an agreed process of decommissioning..."
Hamas and the other Palestinian terror groups have repeatedly emphasized that they will not disarm unless an independent Palestinian state is established.
Moreover, they have expressed strong opposition to the deployment of international forces inside the Gaza Strip under the pretext that it would be an attempt to "impose an international trusteeship" on the Palestinians.
The Palestinian terror groups clearly want to hold on to their weapons: they evidently concluded that having weapons is the only way for them to control, directly and indirectly, any new government established in the Gaza Strip.
They also evidently concluded that whoever is in charge of security in the Gaza Strip will control all the humanitarian aid entering the coastal enclave. The terror groups apparently want to lay their hands on the aid so they can collect taxes and sell various goods to the residents at exorbitant prices to fund their military activities and infrastructure.
On October 31, the US-led Civil-Military Coordination Center observed suspected Hamas operatives looting an aid truck traveling as part of a humanitarian convoy delivering needed assistance from international partners to Gazans in northern Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip. The coordination center was alerted through video surveillance from a US MQ-9 aerial drone flying overhead to monitor implementation of the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel.
For now, it seems that the Arab and Islamic countries are not enthusiastic about joining an international force in the Gaza Strip. Some of these countries, such as Qatar and Turkey, support Hamas and doubtless want it to stay in power, while others are afraid of being branded "collaborators" with Israel against the Palestinian "resistance."
"No nation globally has expressed readiness to have its forces directly engage Hamas fighters," according to a report in the Israel Hayom newspaper. The report revealed that Azerbaijan – an ally of Israel that considered joining the force several weeks ago – conveyed in recent days the message that it will not agree to endanger the lives of its soldiers in Gaza. "In Baku, as in other countries, officials are currently discussing participation in the International Stabilization Force as part of reconstruction processes and maintaining calm, but not at the stage currently required of disarming Hamas and demilitarizing the Strip," the newspaper reported.
Most Arabs and Muslims do not see Hamas as a threat to their national security; they therefore see no need to engage the terror group.
This leaves Israel as the only country that has an urgent interest in disarming Hamas to prevent the terror group and its allies in the Gaza Strip from carrying out more atrocities against Israel.
It is imperative that the Trump administration insist on the disarmament of all the terror groups operating in the Gaza Strip, not only Hamas. If the proposed international force does not want to, or is incapable of undertaking such a task, the Trump administration and the rest of the international community should give Israel a green light to finish the job and rid the Gaza Strip of Hamas and all the terror groups.
Unfortunately, total disarmament appears the only way to ensure Trump's vision that "Gaza will be a deradicalized terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbors."
More importantly, the Trump administration needs to make sure that members of these terror groups, including Hamas, are not incorporated into any new Palestinian police force that is established in the Gaza Strip. Recruiting Islamist jihadis and terrorists to such a police force would allow them to pursue their Jihad (holy war) against Israel with new uniforms and guns supplied by the international community.
Regrettably, if radicals and jihadists are expected to transform themselves into legitimate law-enforcers, the deradicalization of the Gaza Strip will never take place.
Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.
