To understand this you have to understand how the SVG markup for links is built up. The documentation explains it pretty well:
http://jointjs.com/tutorial#link-styling
If you need to check in more detail about the CSS class structure, I find it useful to use Inspect Element on your browser.
Once you understand this you will see that you can do what you are asking for using CSS. For a demo look here:
http://jsfiddle.net/azt8jpam/1/
For links you need to set display: none
on the connection-wrap
, link-tools
, marker-vertices
and marker-arrowhead
classes.
For completeness you could also set cursor: auto
on the shapes. For example
.element.basic.Rect {
cursor: auto
}