A senior Hamas official who spoke to Reuters on Friday said that the terror group could not commit to disarming and defended the public executions in Gaza earlier this week.

Reuters sat down with senior Hamas member Mohammed Nazzal in Doha, Qatar, where senior Hamas leaders have long enjoyed safe haven. Nazzal said that the executions that took place on Monday were part of “exceptional measures” taken during war. At least seven men were shot in the back of the head in front of a crowd in Gaza after Hamas accused them of conspiring with Israel. Nazzal said the executed men were “criminals guilty of killing.”

Nazzal added that Hamas would like to see a ceasefire last between three and five years, so that Gaza can be rebuilt, Reuters reported. He added that after the rebuilding, Palestinians should be given “horizons and hope” for statehood.

Asked about Nazzal’s comments, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office told Reuters, “Hamas is supposed to release all hostages in stage 1. It has not. Hamas knows where the bodies of our hostages are. Hamas are to be disarmed under this agreement. No ifs, no buts. They have not. Hamas need to adhere to the 20-point plan. They are running out of time.”

The Hamas official’s comments come hours after President Donald Trump warned, “If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the Deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them.” The president later clarified that he did not intend to use U.S. troops to take out the terrorists.

“I didn’t say who will go in, but somebody will go in. It’s not going to be us. We won’t have to,” he said. “There are people very close, very nearby that will go in. They’ll do the trick very easily, but under our auspices.”

Join us now during our exclusive Deal of the Decade. Get everything for $7 a month. Not as fans. As fighters. Go to DailyWire.com/Subscribe to join now.

The first phase of Trump’s deal between Israel and Hamas, which was agreed upon earlier this week, required Hamas to hand over the remaining living and deceased hostages, while Israel would release nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, including hundreds of terrorists. The remaining living hostages have been released, but Hamas has so far failed to locate and hand over the bodies of all 28 deceased hostages that were still being held by the terrorists.

It appears that Hamas has no desire to see the next phase of the peace plan come to fruition, which would require the terrorists to lay down their weapons and hand over control of Gaza.

Trump said earlier this week that he was confident Hamas would disarm, threatening that if the terror group did not agree to lay down its weapons voluntarily, it would be disarmed by force.

“They’re going to disarm because they said they were going to disarm,” Trump said. “And if they don’t disarm, we will disarm them.”

“They know I’m not playing games,” the president added.

Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner is under scrutiny for a series of resurfaced social media posts in which he declares himself a “communist” and denigrates cops and white people.

CNN’s KFile uncovered the Reddit posts from Platner, who is facing off against Gov. Janet Mills in the Democratic primary, the winner of which will take on Republican Senator Susan Collins.

“I got older and became a communist,” Platner, a veteran and oyster farmer, wrote on a Reddit forum dubbed “antiwork” in 2021, according to CNN. He also said he was a “vegetable growing, psychedelics taking social these days” in a United States Marine Corps subreddit that same year, saying that he “still got the guns though, I don’t trust the facsists [sic] these days,” citing his past military experience in the post.

“Living in white rural America, I’m afraid to tell you they actually are,” the Democrat said about white Americans.

“Bastards. Cops are bastards. All of them, in fact,” Platner said in another post.

POLITICO reported that Platner wrote other Reddit posts in 2018 suggesting that “an armed working class is a requirement for economic justice” and said that a “good semi-automatic rifle” would be expected in order to successfully “fight fascism.”

In addition, the Washington Post reported multiple posts he made to Reddit in 2013 regarding sexual assault, including in the military.

“Rape is a real thing. If you’re so worried about it to buy Kevlar underwear you’d think you might not get blacked out f***ed up around people you aren’t comfortable with,” he wrote.

“In today’s current climate, when every whisper of a misplaced hand brings down a feature length film, anyone who actually thinks the military is purposefully covering up rape to save the career of some god damn [captain], is clearly both an idiot and junior enough in rank or life experience to think it matters,” Platner wrote.

Bangor Daily News on Friday uncovered more of Platner’s Reddit posts, from 2013, in which he calls black people cheap.

“I work as a bartender and it always amazes me how solid this stereotype is,” Platner wrote. “Every now and again a black patron will leave a 15-20% tip, but usually it [is] between 0-5%. There’s got to be a reason behind it, what is it?”

The candidate said that the posts circulating do not reflect who he is today.

“As I told CNN, I was f***ing around on the internet at a time when I felt lost and very disillusioned with our government who sent me overseas to watch my friends die,” Platner told POLITICO. “I made dumb jokes and picked fights. But of course I’m not a socialist. I’m a small business owner, a Marine Corps veteran, and a retired s***poster.”

However, Republicans have raised concerns about the candidate’s past comments.

“Graham Platner is a communist who supports violence against Republicans to promote his radical agenda. These posts are not just him messing around on the internet as he is trying to claim, they paint a very dark picture of a candidate not fit for office,” Samantha Cantrell, NRSC Regional Press Secretary, told The Daily Wire in response to the reports on the Democrat.

The Daily Wire reached out to the Platner campaign for comment.