A senior leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad—the second largest armed resistance movement fighting in Gaza—told Drop Site News that no more Israeli captives will be freed unless the U.S. and regional mediators force Israel to agree to a ceasefire deal that includes the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces and an end to its military assault on the Strip.

“We are not surrendering this single card in the hands of the resistance,” said Mohammed Al-Hindi, the deputy secretary general and chief political negotiator of PIJ, referring to the 59 Israel captives—living and dead—held in Gaza. “The condition of the resistance is: We are prepared to implement a comprehensive deal—the release of all captives held in Gaza in exchange for an end to the war and withdrawal.”

While Hamas is leading the indirect negotiations with Israel for a Gaza deal, Palestinian Islamic Jihad is consulted before any formal responses are given to the mediators from Qatar and Egypt.

Al-Hindi said that while Hamas and PIJ prefer a comprehensive “all for all” deal, they remain open to a framework that “could be implemented in phases—a comprehensive and clear deal, but implemented in phases, to accommodate some of the tensions within Israel.”

Since the early 1980s, Al-Hindi has been a central figure in Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He is a pediatrician by training and early in his career worked at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza. Al-Hindi was jailed for a year during the First Intifada and has been imprisoned several times by both the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority. In 2004, Israeli helicopters fired several missiles at Al-Hindi’s office in Gaza in what was widely believed to be an assassination attempt. Al-Hindi is the chief of PIJ’s political department and the top deputy to its secretary general, Ziyad Al-Nakhalah.

Al-Hindi led PIJ’s delegation in talks that resulted in a May 2023 Egyptian-brokered ceasefire between the group and Israel. It was the culmination of fighting that began in August 2022 when Israel assassinated several senior PIJ officials in Gaza. The movement’s armed wing, Saraya Al Quds, retaliated with rocket attacks. Israel, in turn, pummeled Gaza with air strikes and conducted raids in the occupied West Bank. During that conflict, Hamas did not participate, though it praised PIJ for “defending the Palestinian people.” Al-Hindi and several senior Hamas officials said that relations between Hamas and PIJ are now stronger than ever.

In an exclusive two-hour in-person interview with Drop Site, Al-Hindi said that in the two months since Israel unilaterally withdrew from the ceasefire deal signed in January and guaranteed by the United States, Israel has flooded Qatar and Egypt, the regional mediators on the deal, with a wave of new demands it knows Hamas and other resistance groups would reject. Among these was the total disarmament of not just Hamas, but the entire Gaza Strip, as well as the expulsion of Palestinian resistance leaders from the enclave.

“The biggest problem for the Israelis is the issue of weapons. Disarmament is an issue that no one can accept, neither the resistance nor the Palestinian people,” Al-Hindi said. “If the resistance ends with the surrender of weapons, they will implement the forced displacement of [Palestinians out of] Gaza.”

A recent draft proposal presented to Hamas by Egyptian mediators, which was obtained by Drop Site, also allowed for the indefinite presence of Israeli forces inside Gaza and no clearly defined path to a long term truce. “What Israel was attempting to achieve through negotiations was the release of the captives held by the resistance, without ending the war,” he said. “It was as if [Israel] was saying, ‘The people of Gaza and the resistance in Gaza are sentenced to death, but we want to return the captives in order to carry out this sentence.’”

A new public opinion poll, conducted by the independent Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, found significant support in both Gaza and the West Bank for Hamas’s negotiating stance. “The overwhelming majority of Palestinians believe that the war will not end and Israel will not withdraw from the Gaza Strip if Hamas agrees to disarm,” the poll, released on May 5, concluded. “Similarly, the overwhelming majority disagree with the view that if Hamas releases the hostages, Israel will end the war and withdraw from the Gaza Strip.”

Al-Hindi said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s promises that Hamas will be eliminated and that the Palestinian resistance would surrender is fantasy. He said the genocide in Gaza and the intensifying ethnic cleansing operations in the West Bank may appear as tactical successes for Netanyahu’s careerlong agenda to erase the Palestinians, but that focusing on the past 19 months conceals the fires yet to come.

“Resistance is in the DNA of the Palestinian people—they will not surrender,” Al-Hindi said. “There may come a day when Israel finds itself longing for Hamas. The anger that has accumulated among the people is immense and it could explode at any moment. And it’s not just among the Palestinian people, but also among the people of the region and the free people of the world. There is anger, great anger. Israel no longer holds a monopoly on the image of the victim—it has come to be seen as the executioner. These issues, arrogance and pride, sometimes blind people and prevent them from seeing reality and acting rationally.”

Al-Hindi believes Netanyahu wants to seize the entire Gaza Strip, as Israel formally announced its intent to do this week, and to expel the Palestinians from the territory and that international condemnations, international court rulings, and arrest warrants have had no impact in deterring this agenda. “Israel is influenced only by internal factors and the U.S. administration,” Al-Hindi said, pointing to mounting public pressure inside of Israel to make a deal that frees the Israeli captives. “This creates a problem for the Israeli government: how can it retrieve the captives without entering [Gaza] and searching for them? And if the army enters, it will suffer losses while conducting this search,” he said. “That's why they resort to bombing with aircrafts and tanks. They bomb areas, but they don't retrieve captives.”

Al-Hindi said that while he is certain Hamas’s negotiators will not enter into an agreement that fails to halt the genocide, he predicted Israel will ultimately be pressured to make concessions. Netanyahu’s war aims may cause problems for Trump’s regional agenda and the U.S. president’s desire to be seen as a deal maker who can end Biden-era wars.

There is also mounting unrest among the Israeli public and widespread demands to make a deal to free the remaining captives. “I believe that internal pressure within Israel, as well as the U.S. administration, which can exert some pressure, may result in an agreement, even if only partially,” he said. “Trump made many promises, whether regarding the war in Gaza and stopping it or the war in Ukraine and stopping it, but he has not fulfilled any of his promises so far.”

“Israel Wants an Exodus”

As Trump prepares to travel to the Middle East next week for meetings with Arab rulers as part of a regional tour to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, his administration is engaged in a flurry of diplomatic activity aimed at producing the veneer of U.S. efforts to promote regional stability. “President Trump is coming to the region to collect funds from the Emirates and Saudi Arabia. So it would be better for him to arrive while there's some stability in the region,” said Al-Hindi. Saudi Arabia and the UAE both announced recently they would invest more than $1 trillion each in the U.S., including large weapons deals.

Following Trump’s recent announcement of a ceasefire deal with Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis in Yemen, and the start of U.S. negotiations with Iran, Israeli officials are increasingly concerned about what Trump may do on Gaza. “In the coming reconciliation with all the players ahead of Trump’s visit, we may find ourselves in the role of the lamb—and the smell of the grill is already in the air,” said Knesset member and Netanyahu ally Amit Halevi in a post on Telegram on Thursday.

Ha’aretz reported Friday that the Trump administration is “heavily pressuring” Netanyahu to sign a deal with Hamas ahead of Trump’s visit, scheduled to begin May 13.

Al-Hindi and senior Hamas officials told Drop Site that Palestinian resistance groups will not agree to a hastily assembled, short-term truce to give Trump a photo-op in the Middle East. “There are desperate attempts underway, ahead of President Trump's visit, to force a partial agreement through tactics of starvation, continued genocide, and threats to escalate military operations,” said Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau. “We affirm that such attempts will not succeed in breaking the will of our people or their resistance, nor will they force us to forgo the most critical condition of any agreement: a guaranteed end to the war.”

Al-Hindi pointed out that the original deal signed between Hamas and Israel on January 17 had been negotiated over the course of many months and had officially been accepted by Hamas and other Palestinian factions on July 2, 2024. Originally promoted as “the Biden” plan and endorsed by the UN Security Council last June, the three-phase deal was virtually identical to the terms stipulated in the January agreement, signed days before Donald Trump was sworn into office.

During the second phase of the agreement, Israel was to withdraw all of its forces from Gaza, and all remaining Israeli captives would be released in exchange for large numbers of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and other facilities. The third phase of the deal envisioned a multi-year reconstruction effort in Gaza. From the beginning, Netanyahu made clear he had no intention of abiding by the deal and portrayed it as a one-phase deal aimed at freeing as many captives as possible before resuming the war.

In the two months since it unilaterally abandoned the ceasefire deal, Israel has presided over a full-spectrum blockade of all food, medicine, fuel, and other supplies entering Gaza. On March 18, Israel resumed its terror bombing of Gaza, killing more than 2,400 Palestinians, most of them women and children. Israel claimed the renewed air strikes and ground incursions were aimed at forcing Hamas to surrender to Israel’s new demands, unconditionally release all Israeli captives, and lay down its arms. “Israel expects that increasing the pressure—starving people, bombing, and indiscriminate killing—will pressure the resistance to release all the captives,” Al-Hindi said, adding that it “has had no effect” on the stance of Hamas in the negotiations.

In recent days, Trump has frequently told reporters he is pressing Netanyahu on the humanitarian catastrophe inside of Gaza and has claimed that the U.S. is working on a plan to deliver food and other aid to the enclave. Speaking to reporters after a call with Netanyahu on April 25, Trump said, he told him, “We’ve got to be good to Gaza because people are – those people are suffering.” Trump added, “There’s a very big need for medicine, food... We’re taking care of it.”

The United Nations and a coalition of 20 aid groups recently denounced Israel’s proposal to deliver limited quantities of aid under severe restrictions, with the aid groups issuing a joint letter charging Israel’s plans would lead to “de facto internment conditions” in Gaza. Last week, Israel suggested it may seek to establish militarized zones inside of Gaza where private contractors, potentially including those from a U.S. company, would distribute food through a process that includes highly restrictive security vetting and calorie-controlled quantities.

“Maybe the Israelis will do something like that, but not to protect the Palestinians from being killed by hunger,” said Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official, in an interview with Drop Site. “They may do such a thing as an effort to protect their position, because now they are under pressure from everywhere. ‘You are killing the Palestinians, you are committing a genocide. There is a hunger situation in Gaza. You are supposed to not allow this to happen.’” Hamdan charged that Israel will use any limited aid it offers “for creating propaganda.”

The Trump administration, however, seems to be moving ahead with its own plan to take responsibility for aid distribution as part of a broader proposal to end the war, which could pose challenges for Netanyahu’s stated agenda in Gaza. The effort would be spearheaded by a newly created non-governmental “foundation” and involve private security contractors, former U.S. military officers, and humanitarian aid officials.

U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee told journalists Friday that Trump’s plan to distribute aid does not depend on a ceasefire or broader agreement. “The United States doesn't have to tell Israel everything it's going to do,” Huckabee said. “Israel doesn't have to tell us everything they're going to do.” He added that while Israeli forces would provide “security” for the distribution, they would not be involved in distributing any aid.

“President Trump called for creative solutions that would secure peace, protect Israel, and leave Hamas empty-handed and help Gazans,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told reporters Thursday. “Due to [Trump’s] inspirational leadership, we are steps away from that solution, from being able to deliver the aid and the food that has been discussed.”

Hamas said it was not briefed on any of these plans or involved in negotiating terms for aid distribution. “We are not engaged in all these discussions. All of this is reflecting the disputes between the two allies, the Israelis and the Americans,” said Naim, the senior Hamas official, in an interview. “Israel is still insisting on using hunger and famine as a tool of war. Trump has failed to reach a ceasefire agreement before his visit to the region and therefore he wants to make any kind of gesture aimed at improving the image of the administration in this region. He wants to impose a humanitarian aid mechanism into Gaza despite the rejection of the Israelis.”

Naim added: “Both visions toward aid distribution still means that this aid is totally controlled by the Israelis and other security companies, which are related—in one way or another—to the Israelis, and it will not solve the problem.”

As Trump pledges to get aid into Gaza, Israel announced this week its intent to seize the entire Strip. The aim of publicizing the plan, Israeli officials said, is to compel Hamas to accept a ceasefire deal on Netanyahu’s terms before Trump leaves the Middle East. Operation Gideon’s Chariot, Israeli officials claim, would begin after Trump wraps up his Middle East tour if no deal with Hamas is reached. It would be aimed at “the conquest of the Gaza Strip” and occupying the entire enclave indefinitely. According to Brigadier General Efi Dufferin, the chief Israeli military spokesman, the operation would include “wide-scale” attacks and dismantling of infrastructure and the forcing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into the south of the Strip.

“Gaza will be entirely destroyed, civilians will be sent to … the south to a humanitarian zone without Hamas or terrorism, and from there they will start to leave in great numbers to third countries,” said Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich.

In late March, Netanyahu laid out what he called the “final stage” of his genocidal war. “Hamas will lay down its weapons. Its leaders will be allowed to leave. We will see to the general security in the Gaza Strip and will allow the realization of the Trump plan for voluntary migration,” Netanyahu told his cabinet, referring to Trump’s threat to seize Gaza and remove Palestinians from their land. “This is the plan. We are not hiding this.” After floating his “Middle East Riviera” proposal when Netanyahu visited the White House in early February, Trump has largely stopped mentioning it publicly and administration officials have indicated it is not a serious discussion internally. Netanyahu, however, has embraced the concept, making the total removal of Palestinians from Gaza a centerpiece of his stated vision.

“To anyone observing these actions, it appears as if there is no mind formulating viable goals and strategies,” said Al-Hindi. “Israel wants an exodus, and even now, some government officials are saying, ‘We are implementing Trump’s plan,’ even though Trump himself has backed down from it. From their perspective, the solution to the Gaza problem is forced displacement.”

Al-Hindi reiterated that both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are prepared to engage in a long-term truce with Israel, known in Arabic as a hudna. Hamas recently offered a detailed plan to regional mediators outlining a five- to seven-year deal that would see all Israeli captives exchanged for Palestinians held by Israel and a full withdrawal of all Israeli forces from Gaza. As part of such a comprehensive deal, Al-Hindi suggested, there would be room for a range of potential concessions the Palestinian side would be willing to offer.

“The issue of the hudna is important, because you are talking about weapons. During a hudna, weapons are put aside and not used. This concept of ​​a hudna could be proposed as a solution to the weapons issue,” he said. “The issue of Hamas's rule in Gaza, for example, is also something that could be discussed.”

PIJ would support the formation of a post-war governing body to assume responsibility for the Gaza Strip, Al-Hindi said. Hamas has stated that it would step down as the governing authority in Gaza as part of a deal that halts the genocide. Both Egypt and the Palestinian Authority, which is a sworn opponent of both Hamas and PIJ, have offered proposals for independent bodies to take charge in Gaza as part of a long term agreement with Israel. “We have no objection to the formation of such a committee,” Al-Hindi said. “We have no problem with that — as any candidate must be approved by Israel anyway. What matters is that they govern the country, and we have no problem with that.”

Historically, Palestinian Islamic Jihad has had a stronger presence in the occupied West Bank than it does in Gaza, particularly in the northern areas of Nablus, Tulkarm, and Jenin. As Israel has waged its genocidal assault on Gaza, it has dramatically expanded its ethnic cleansing operations in the West Bank. In August 2024, Israel launched its largest military operation in the West Bank since 2002 in a campaign of attacks known as Operation Summer Camps. In January, with the cooperation of the Palestinian Authority, Israeli forces unleashed major attacks against resistance brigades, seizing weapons, killing or capturing fighters, and conducting widespread demolition of homes and infrastructure. Israel also implemented its most sweeping campaign of forced expulsions. Since January, more than 40,000 Palestinians have been expelled from their homes, the largest displacement in the West Bank since 1967. Attacks by armed settlers backed by the Israeli government and military have facilitated further land seizures and illegal settlement construction.

“This is nothing new, and it’s not related to October 7,” said Al-Hindi. “This was a plan that existed during the [Israeli] elections before October 7, and they won on that basis.”

In the 30 years since the Oslo Accords were signed, Al-Hindi said, “the one constant in Israeli policy has been settlements in the West Bank and land confiscation — regardless of whether negotiations are taking place or not. Now they are accelerating this.” He added that there is “a near-consensus in Israel: that there is no Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.”

While he acknowledged there had been significant damage inflicted on resistance factions, Al-Hindi predicted the “spirit of the people in the West Bank will be more united around the resistance than before.” Despite 19 months of unrelenting Israeli bombing and ground assaults in Gaza, Al-Hindi said PIJ’s Saraya Al Quds forces are prepared to continue. “I believe the morale among the [resistance] fighters is high,” he said. “This is because the fighter sees the crimes committed by Israel — his home may have been destroyed, his family and children may be gone. Therefore, morale is high and they are ready to fight at any moment.”

“I believe that Israel is losing”

As Trump heads to the Middle East, he is once again heralding his effort to push more Arab states into normalization agreements with Israel. During Trump’s first term, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan all joined the so-called Abraham Accords. Egypt and Jordan already have longstanding peace treaties with Israel.

On January 21, the day after he assumed the presidency, Trump expressed confidence Saudi normalization would happen. “I don’t think I have to push them,” he said. “I think Saudi Arabia will end up being in the Abraham Accords.” Asked whether it would happen this year, Trump replied, “Could be, but you know, soon.”

Israel’s Channel 12 reported Thursday that Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff recently told the families of Israeli captives held in Gaza, “President Trump is determined to move forward toward a significant deal with Saudi Arabia, even without Israeli involvement,” and suggested Netanyahu was hindering a Gaza deal.

Both Trump and Israel view normalization with Saudi Arabia as the prized jewel, believing that this would pave the way for many other Muslim countries to fall into line. The Saudis have suggested they are open to the proposal, but have publicly stated the kingdom will not enter into normalization without a clear and irrevocable path to Palestinian statehood.

Al-Hindi said that these normalization agreements with Israel—and a broad perception in the region that Arab governments have stood silently by as Israel has killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza—raises the prospect of unpredictable consequences both among Arab populations and within the broader Middle East. “Look, even if these regimes don't fall, people will continue to harbor a great deal of anger. In dictatorial regimes, people are forbidden from expressing their anger, even though sometimes just expressing that anger helps relieve some of it. Therefore, this anger remains bottled up and will explode at some point,” he said. “There is global tension that will persist for a long time, but in this region, the tension will be even greater because of the massacres being committed by Israel.”

Al-Hindi said that PIJ was not involved in the pre-planning of the October 7 attacks, but that its forces were proud to join Hamas in the operation. He said the attacks, known as Operation Al Aqsa Flood, exposed Israel’s central agenda, the crushing of the prospects for a Palestinian state by subjecting its people to a choice of expulsion, subjugation, or death. The genocidal war against Gaza, which has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, unmasked the reality of what Palestinians have faced throughout the 76 years since the start of the Nakba in 1948.

“The entire world is witnessing these sacrifices and is thinking about the Palestinian issue, which was almost dead, about to cease to exist,” he said. “I believe that history is working against Israel—because of its arrogance, hubris, and the excessive force it uses against the Palestinian people and the entire region. When a state loses its vision, loses its reason, and acts out of emotion, anger, and revenge, this does not bode well for its future or stability.” He added, “From a historical perspective, I believe that Israel is losing, while the Palestinian cause is advancing.”

Al-Hindi said that talk of a “two state solution” by Western governments has become almost entirely irrelevant. “There are nearly a million settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Who is going to remove them? Will Trump remove them?,” he asked, laughing. “No one is removing them. They have built settlements and enacted racist laws that give them land, and they're expanding every day — meaning no one can remove them.”

Al-Hindi said he views calls by the European Union and rulings by international courts, declaring Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and expansion of settlements illegal, as irrelevant to the events on the ground. “As for the voices in Europe calling for a two-state solution—these are marginal and have no value. All of Europe has become marginal today,” he said. “The U.S. administration and Trump are the ones that handed over Jerusalem and recognized it [as Israel’s capital], and you can expect him to hand over the West Bank as well. Therefore, in the West Bank, Israel is proceeding with land confiscation and settlement expansion and this will lead to future conflict there.”

Hamas’s official position, since 2017, has been that it would not stand in the way of a two-state resolution along the lines of the pre-1967 war borders with East Jerusalem as Palestine’s capital, a stance senior Hamas officials reiterated in recent interviews with Drop Site. But Al-Hindi said that even if a broad consensus among Palestinians favored such an arrangement, both Democratic and Republican administrations have facilitated Israel’s maximalist agenda to such a degree that the discussion has been stripped of all meaning. “This so-called ‘two-state solution’—it's an Israeli invention, marketed by the United States— not to be implemented, but rather to undermine the Palestinian resistance in 1987,” Al-Hindi said, referencing the launch of the first Palestinian intifada, which lasted until the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993. “The two-state solution is not viable. There is a consensus within Israel, from the far right to the far left, [against] the idea of a Palestinian state in the West Bank. Therefore, the two-state solution is Israeli, and the two-state solution has been pursued for 30 years, and it's been useless. Israel created two states: a state in 1948 for the Jews, and a state in 1967, also for the Jews.”

A just resolution, in PIJ’s view, would be the creation of one democratic state throughout all the lands of historic Palestine, which also encompasses the territory of the modern state of Israel. “Currently, Palestinians between the river and the sea are the majority,” Al-Hindi said. “By all standards, if you want to talk about a democratic, pluralistic state, and citizenship, we are prepared to do so and have no problem—but they have no right to rule over us and control us.”

“We don't have a problem with Jews as Jews. We can live with them, and they can live with us,” he added. “But the people of the land should be the ones who govern—not a situation where we are slaves and they are the masters. This is unacceptable by all standards, even at the democratic level and elections-wise.”

Al-Hindi recognizes that the most likely scenario for the foreseeable future will be the continuation of the status quo. There may be a ceasefire deal in Gaza on the horizon and the U.S. may promote the appearance of trying to rein in some of Israel’s aggressions in the West Bank. Arab governments will promote their peace plans and reconstruction ideas for Gaza and Western diplomats will organize conferences, summits and meetings. But short of a long-term solution where the Palestinians achieve statehood with the full rights of all other nations, he said that Palestinian resistance will not disappear.

“I believe this conflict will be long and will continue. It’s tied to changes in the world and the region. And unless the Palestinian people obtain their rights, there will be a lot of bloodshed in this conflict,” he said. “Israel uses all these methods without accountability. It believes that power, arrogance and racism will dictate this conflict, and that approach has consistently failed over time.”

Drop Site News Middle East Research Fellow Jawa Ahmad contributed to this report.

Leave a comment