---

Rafah stands today as the battered yet unbroken frontier of Palestinian resistance — a landscape scarred by bombardment, starvation, and betrayal. Israel calls for disarmament, Egypt proposes to mediate, and the world, as always, expects the occupied to trust their occupier. Yet Rafah’s fighters refuse to surrender their arms — not out of fanaticism, but out of reasoned distrust. They have learned, through decades of deceit, that to hand over weapons is to sign one’s own death warrant.

The logic of distrust

The refusal to disarm cannot be understood without recalling history’s bitter lessons. Every ceasefire in Gaza has been a mirage — a pause between massacres. Every “peace process” has been a trap of words crafted to preserve Israeli impunity. Israel’s record speaks with unflinching clarity: it has violated truces, assassinated negotiators, bombed civilians under the banner of “self-defence,” and choked Gaza through a blockade that starves children and withholds medicine.

When such a state calls for disarmament, the intent is not peace but pacification. Disarmament, in this equation, is not a mutual confidence-building measure; it is the systematic dismantling of Palestinian agency. The fighters in Rafah understand that Israel’s “security” demands have never included Palestinian safety — only Palestinian submission.

Egypt’s unsteady mediation

Egypt’s proposal to collect weapons from Rafah’s fighters is dressed in diplomatic language — “confidence building,” “phased truce,” “security coordination.” Yet to the people of Gaza, Egypt is no neutral broker. Cairo has helped enforce the blockade, sealed the Rafah crossing when Gazans most needed escape, demolished tunnels that were lifelines, and often echoed Israel’s talking points.

According to Middle East Monitor (7 Nov 2025), Egypt offered a deal for some Hamas fighters to surrender weapons and tunnel information in exchange for safe passage — a plan the fighters rejected. Their refusal stems from long experience: arms handed to Egypt may soon be shared with Israeli intelligence, and the “safe passage” promised today could be nullified tomorrow.

For Gazans, the Rafah crossing is a symbol not of hope but of suffocation. Cairo’s mediation is necessary but not neutral. Many still remember that the border has opened more often for corpses than for refugees.

Occupation never negotiates in good faith

Disarmament could have meaning only in a context of equality — where both sides are bound by law, and trust can be verified. But in Palestine, equality is fiction. Israel negotiates with overwhelming military superiority, international impunity, and a colonial arrogance that mocks reciprocity.

The Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, have stated unequivocally that “in the dictionary of the Al-Qassam Brigades there is no principle of surrender and self-delivery to the enemy.” Hamas’s political leadership, too, clarified that it will not lay down arms “unless an independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state is established.” These positions are not mere ideology; they are a rational response to an occupation that kills, detains, and deceives with impunity.

When the mediators are complicit

Palestinians are not naïve. They know that the same Western powers calling for calm are the ones replenishing Israel’s arsenals and blocking accountability at the UN. They watch as humanitarian aid is politicised, as journalists and doctors are targeted, and as the so-called international community recycles its hollow language of “both sides.”

Why, then, should fighters surrender to a system built on deceit? Why should the occupied disarm when their occupiers enjoy unrestrained firepower, diplomatic protection, and the audacity to declare genocide a “war on terror”?

UN reports confirm the catastrophic reality. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) estimate that about 400,000 Palestinians were displaced again following the collapse of the latest ceasefire. UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric underscored that “no arrangements to secure their safety and survival have been made — a responsibility that falls on Israel as the occupying power.” Even Secretary-General António Guterres warned he would reduce the UN aid “footprint” in Gaza because renewed Israeli strikes made relief work impossible. 

In such a world, surrender is suicide.

Disarmament without justice is death

To demand that Rafah’s fighters surrender before the siege is lifted, before prisoners are freed, before the displaced can return, is to demand capitulation masquerading as peace. Any genuine disarmament must be conditional, reciprocal, and internationally verifiable — one where weapons are traded for rights, not for silence.

A credible roadmap would require an independent international mechanism — under UN auspices or another neutral body — to oversee any transition. This must include an end to the blockade, withdrawal of Israeli troops, release of political prisoners, and enforceable guarantees of Palestinian sovereignty. Anything less would merely reproduce occupation in new form.

Without justice, there can be no peace; without equality, no trust. The people of Gaza know this better than the diplomats who lecture them about “security.”

A people cornered into resistance

Rafah’s defiance is born from desperation. Every bomb that falls on Gaza reinforces the conviction that only resistance commands respect. When the world applauds Israeli “self-defence” while condemning Palestinian self-determination, the message is unmistakable: unarmed Palestinians are invisible, and armed Palestinians are criminal. Between invisibility and criminalisation, resistance becomes the only form of existence left.

The men and women who still hold weapons in Rafah do not dream of endless war. They dream of a life where arms are no longer needed — but they know that dream will not come from surrendering to the same power that has repeatedly broken its word. Their loyalty is not to death, but to dignity.

The path forward

If there is to be a real ceasefire, it must begin with truth — not the convenient lies that equate occupier and occupied. It must recognise that the weapons in Rafah are not the cause of violence, but the symptom of a deeper injustice: the occupation itself. The international community must stop treating Palestinian resistance as the obstacle to peace and instead confront the impunity that fuels Israel’s aggression.

Only a framework grounded in justice can make disarmament conceivable. Until then, Rafah’s fighters will continue to see their weapons not as instruments of terror, but as the last defence against extinction.

The moral centre of resistance

Marwan Barghouthi’s words echo through every tunnel and shattered home: “Peace will not be achieved by silencing the resistance, but by ending the occupation.” To expect Rafah’s fighters to surrender while their people are still under siege is to misunderstand what resistance means.

For Palestinians, disarmament under these conditions is not peace — it is erasure. To disarm in the face of a dishonest Israel and a complicit world is to abandon the right to exist as a free people. Rafah’s fighters have made their choice: they will not surrender, because survival without dignity is another name for death.

Ranjan Solomon from Goa, India, is a political commentator and human rights advocate with a longstanding commitment to cultural pluralism, interfaith harmony, and social justice. He works on the right of nations to define their own destinies free of hegemonic narratives. 

This article was originally published on Middle East Monitor.
Views in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect CGS policy.