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Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/02/10/us-britain-hamas-weapons-palestine-israel/
U.S. Rejects British Pleas to Allow Hamas to Keep Weapons
(Telegraph-UK) Melanie Swan - U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has rejected lobbying efforts by Jonathan Powell, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer's national security adviser, to allow Hamas to keep its small arms as part of the Gaza peace process. He told the Telegraph the terror group could not be trusted to retain AK-47s and other personal weapons. Huckabee also dismissed proposals to store Hamas's other weapons in secured facilities in Gaza, saying it would not work and the weapons could easily fall into the wrong hands. Huckabee said: "I don't think Hamas will have any role in the security structure, any role in governing - the president has been very clear about that. To leave Hamas in charge of running anything in Gaza would be like leaving some of the Nazis in place to help govern Germany after World War Two. Nobody would think that's a good idea." He insisted that any Hamas claims of disarmament "would have to be observable and provable. Nobody's going to take Hamas's word for it, because Hamas is not trustworthy. They proved themselves to not be civilized people. They don't do things in a civilized way. Nobody would expect that whatever they say could be taken at face value. It'll have to be verified." Huckabee pointed to the example of the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon that failed to curtail Hizbullah as "a good model to say what we don't want." He added, "President Trump is President Trump, not President Chump, so people shouldn't think [the Iranians] can string him along without progress being made....We'll soon find out if they learned anything from the 12-day war." He warned: "Americans probably see Iran and the threat as something so far away. It's a huge mistake. For 47 years, Iran has said 'death to America.' So, should Iran be able to develop long-range ballistic missile capability, supersonic missile capability, it would be incredibly naive for the citizens of the United States to think that somehow they're just immune, that they're not a target. Because they are a target - a stated target repeatedly - of the Iranian regime."