Hamas can survive politically by giving up weapons and armed conflict, peace envoy says

Hamas can survive politically by giving up weapons and armed conflict, peace envoy says5 hours agoShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleLucy WilliamsonMiddle East correspondent, JerusalemReutersHamas has said it is committed to handing over power but so far refused to disarmA senior diplomat tasked with implementing Donald Trump's peace plan for Gaza has said Hamas could survive as a political movement after handing over power, if it rejected armed conflict and gave up its weapons and military structures.Nickolay Mladenov, high representative for Gaza to the US-led Board of Peace, speaking to journalists on a visit to Jerusalem, also warned that the current stalemate could lead to a permanent division of Gaza, along the so-called Yellow Line marking the area controlled by Israel."[Continuing] a status quo actually means at some point solidifying the Yellow Line, probably into a fence, probably into a wall, creating a permanent separation in Gaza," he said."And if anyone wants to convince me that the Palestinian people in Gaza would like to see the Gaza Strip divided in that way, I don't believe it. And if you tell me that this is security for Israel, I don't see it as well."Donald Trump's peace plan for Gaza is currently stalled in a fractured ceasefire. Hamas is so far refusing to disarm, while Israel is regularly carrying out strikes across Gaza, and firing at those who approach the territory it holds.AFPIsrael has been extending the area under its effective control in GazaPatrick Griffiths, Middle East spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, told me he had heard gunfire and explosions every day while visiting the organisation's field hospital in the southern area of Rafah, close to the Israeli-held area."All my colleagues there had a story about going to the ground as stray bullets fly over the hospital," he told me. "They have memories of staff and patients being hit as stray bullets fl...