A senior Hamas official admitted in an interview with The New York Times on Monday that if he had known the destruction that would be brought on to Gaza because of the October 7 attacks, he would have never agreed to it.
The Qatar-based head of Hamas’s foreign relations office, Mousa Abu Marzouk, told NYT that he was not informed about the specific details that were being planned.
“If it was expected that what happened would happen, there wouldn’t have been October 7,” he said.
Hamas infiltrated southern Israel on October 7, 2023 and killed over 1,000 people and kidnapped over 250 people to Gaza. Since then, Israel and Hamas had been at war.
‘Kind of a victory’ that Hamas survived in the war
Abu Marzouk told the Times that “Hamas’s survival in the war against Israel was itself a kind of victory.”
He also noted that it would be “unacceptable” to say that Hamas had won, “especially considering the scale of what Israel inflicted on Gaza.”
“We’re talking about a party that lost control of itself and took revenge against everything,” he said when referring to Israel. “That is not a victory under any circumstances.”
He also said that Hamas leadership is willing to negotiate about the group’s future weapons in Gaza. “We are ready to speak about every issue,” he said. “Any issue that is put on the table, we need to speak about it.”
Hamas and hostages
When speaking about the remaining hostages who are still held captive in Gaza, Abu Marzouk said that if there were to be an extension of the first phase, Hamas would demand more prisoners be released because they consider the rest of the hostages to be IDF soldiers.
He also mentioned that Hamas was open to releasing all of the hostages at the same time if Israel were to release thousands of terrorists from the prisons and withdraw from Gaza, ending the war.
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