Musa Abu Marzouk, the head of Hamas’ foreign relations office, told The New York Times that he would not have supported the October 7 attack on Israel had he known the scale of destruction it would bring to Gaza. He also indicated that there is some willingness within Hamas to negotiate the future of its weapons.
Hamas swiftly rejected his remarks, reaffirming its commitment to its “resistance weapons” as legitimate as long as Palestinian land remains occupied. The group stated that Abu Marzouk’s comments do not reflect its official position, while others claimed his statements were “taken out of context.”
A look at Abu Marzouk’s history of public statements reveals that he is the Hamas official most frequently accused of having his remarks misinterpreted, denied, or corrected. This pattern is not new—his statements have been walked back or revised not just after October 7, but during every war in Gaza.
In 2009, after the Operation Cast Lead war (also known as the Battle of Al-Furqan), Abu Marzouk gave a lecture at the Yarmouk refugee camp in southern Damascus, where he said: “Yes, we lost 1,500 martyrs, but our free daughters and our jihadist sisters gave birth to more than 3,500 Palestinian children during the aggression.”
His statement sparked outrage at the time, and it was later claimed that his words had been taken out of context. It turned out that his comment was based on a UN report detailing the suffering of Gazans, which included figures on the humanitarian toll of the war. However, Hamas selectively extracted data from the report and reframed it as a sign of victory.
More recently, during the ongoing war following October 7, Abu Marzouk stated that Hamas’ tunnels were built to protect fighters, not civilians, and that the responsibility for protecting Gaza’s civilians lies with the United Nations and Israel. This, too, was later claimed to have been taken “out of context.”
In another instance, Abu Marzouk told Al-Monitor that Hamas seeks to join the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and would respect its commitments—hinting at the possibility that Hamas might recognize Israel.
Yet shortly afterward, he took to X (formerly Twitter) to clarify that his statements had been misunderstood, declaring: “Hamas does not recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation... nor does it accept conceding any of the rights of the Palestinian people. We affirm that resistance will continue until liberation and return.”
These contradictions and rhetorical maneuvers are not new for Abu Marzouk. But in his recent New York Times interview, he made yet another striking claim: that Hamas’ mere survival in its war against Israel is itself “a kind of victory.” He compared Hamas to an ordinary person fighting former boxing champion Mike Tyson, saying that if the untrained novice survives Tyson’s punches, people will say he is victorious. He then added that it would be “unacceptable” to claim that Hamas won, especially given the devastation Israel has inflicted on Gaza.
With that in mind, who will take on the task of rebuilding Gaza? Who is willing to finance a region that has now endured its fifth war—potentially heading for a sixth? Who would invest in a place where its leadership holds such a mindset—let alone those living under it?
These are not mere rhetorical questions but serious concerns directed at people who cannot even maintain consistency in their own statements. What Hamas is doing is disastrous. The Palestinian Authority must return to Gaza—everything else is just stalling.
