A World Health Organization (WHO) team evacuates sick children from Gaza City and transfers them to Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, amid the deepening health crisis on October 03, 2025. (Anadolu photo)
ISTANBUL – Senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk said Friday that the Palestine resistance group had agreed to US President Donald Trump’s plan on a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip “in principle,” endorsing its main outlines, while stressing that implementation would require negotiations.
Abu Marzouk emphasized in an interview with Qatar’s Al Jazeera network that the group “would hand over its weapons to a future Palestinian state,” and the fate of Palestinians is a “national matter that Hamas alone cannot decide.”
“We agreed to the US plan in its main outlines, as a principle,” he said.
Abu Marzouk noted that the plan’s implementation “requires detailed negotiations through mediators.”
He pointed out that Hamas “will enter negotiations over all issues related to the movement and its weapons.”
“For example, all the details concerning the peacekeeping force require understandings and clarification.”
Abu Marzouk explained that Hamas “will hand over weapons to the coming Palestinian state, and whoever governs Gaza will hold the weapons.”
He said that “shaping the future of the Palestinian people is a national issue that Hamas alone cannot decide,” calling on Washington to “look positively at the future of the Palestinian people.”
Abu Marzouk noted that “there was a national agreement to hand over Gaza’s administration to independents whose reference is the Palestinian Authority.”
He affirmed that Hamas is “a national liberation movement, and that the definition of terrorism in the plan cannot be applied to it.”
Earlier, Hamas announced that it approved the release of all Israeli captives, the delivery of deceased bodies and the handover of Gaza’s administration to an independent Palestinian body in its response to Trump’s ceasefire plan for Gaza.
The Palestinian group said in a statement on Telegram that “other issues raised in President Trump’s proposal concerning the future of the Gaza Strip and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people are tied to a unified national position based on relevant international laws and resolutions.”
Israel estimates that 48 Israeli captives are in Gaza, including 20 alive, while around 11,100 Palestinians are held in its prisons, suffering from torture, starvation, and medical neglect, with many killed as a result, according to Palestinian and Israeli media and rights reports.
Earlier Friday, Trump gave Hamas until 6 p.m. Washington time on Sunday to approve his plan regarding the Gaza Strip. (Anadolu)
