ISTANBUL (AP) — A senior Hamas political official told The Associated Press that the Islamic insurgent group is willing to agree to a five-year or longer truce with Israel and to lay down its arms and become a political party if a Palestinian state is established. independent in the borders prior to 1967.
Khalil al-Hayya’s statements in an interview on Wednesday coincide with the stalemate in ceasefire negotiations, which have been underway for months. The suggestion of possible disarmament appeared to be a major concession from the group, which is officially committed to the destruction of Israel.
But Israel is unlikely to consider that scenario. After the deadly Oct. 7 attack that sparked the war, he vowed to crush Hamas and his current government staunchly opposes the creation of a Palestinian state in territories captured in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official who has represented Palestinian insurgents in negotiations for a ceasefire and the release of hostages, adopted a tone that was sometimes defiant and sometimes more conciliatory.
Speaking to the AP in Istanbul, Al-Hayya said Hamas wants to join the Palestine Liberation Organization, led by the rival Fatah faction, to form a unified government for Gaza and the West Bank. He said his group would accept “a fully sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and the return of Palestinian refugees in accordance with international resolutions” along Israel’s pre-1967 border.
If this were to happen, he noted, Hamas’s military wing would dissolve.
“All the experiences of the people who fought against the occupation, when they became independent and got their rights and their State, what did those forces do? They became political parties and their defense combat forces became the national army,” Indian.
Over the years, Hamas has at times moderated its public position regarding the possibility of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. But officially its political program “rejects any alternative to the full liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea,” referring to the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, which includes the lands that now form Israel.
Al-Hayya did not clarify whether its apparent acceptance of a two-state solution would amount to the end of the Palestinian conflict with Israel or would be an intermediate step toward the group’s stated goal of destroying its rival.
There was no immediate reaction from Israel or the Palestinian Authority, the internationally recognized autonomous government that was expelled by Hamas from Gaza in 2007, a year after winning the Palestinian parliamentary elections. After the departure of the Strip, the Palestinian Authority administers the semi-autonomous areas of the West Bank occupied by Israel.
The Palestinian Authority aims to establish an independent state in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza — areas captured by Israel in the 1967 war. While the international community largely supports the two-state solution, the conservative government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu , She rejects.
The war in Gaza has lasted almost seven months and ceasefire talks are paralyzed. The conflict began after the Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel in which Hamas-led insurgents killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 more hostage. The subsequent Israeli air and ground campaign in the besieged enclave has claimed the lives of more than 34,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to local health authorities, and displaced nearly 80% of its 2.3 million inhabitants. .
Israel is now preparing for an offensive on the southern city of Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians have fled.
According to Israel, it has dismantled most of the two dozen battalions that Hamas initially had, but maintains that the remaining four are entrenched in Rafah. Furthermore, he claims that the operation in the city is necessary to achieve victory over his rival.
Al-Hayya noted that such an offensive will not destroy Hamas. Contacts between the political leadership abroad and the military in Gaza are “uninterrupted” by the war, he said, adding that “contacts, decisions and directives are made in consultation” between the two groups.
The Israeli forces “have not destroyed more than 20% of (Hamas’) capabilities, neither human nor on the ground,” he said. “If they can’t finish (Hamas), what is the solution? The solution is to reach a consensus.”
In November, a ceasefire lasting more than a week led to the release of more than 100 hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners in Israel. But talks for a longer-term truce and the release of the remaining hostages are stalled, with both sides accusing the other of intransigence. Qatar, which has been a key interlocutor in the process, recently said it is “re-evaluating” its role as mediator.
Most of Hamas’s top political officials, who were previously in Qatar, have left the country in the last week to travel to Turkey, where the group’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Saturday. Al-Hayya denied that a permanent move of his main political office is being prepared and said Hamas wants Qatar to continue as a mediator in the talks.
Israeli and US officials have accused Hamas of not being serious about a deal. Al-Hayya denied this and stated that they have made concessions on the number of Palestinian prisoners who should be released in exchange for Israeli hostages. The group does not know exactly how many are still in Gaza or if they are still alive, he added.
But he noted that Hamas will not back down from its call for a permanent ceasefire and full withdrawal of Israeli troops. Israel has refused and claims that its campaign will continue until the insurgents are definitively defeated and that it will then maintain a security presence in Gaza.
“If we don’t have the certainty that the war is going to end, why would we hand over the prisoners?” the Hamas leader said of the other hostages.
Al-Hayya also implicitly threatened that Hamas would attack Israel or other forces stationed around the floating dock that the United States is trying to build off the Gaza coast for the arrival of aid by sea. “We categorically reject any non-Palestinian presence in Gaza, whether at sea or on land, and we will confront any military force present in those places, Israeli or not, as an occupying power,” he said.
Al-Hayya indicated that Hamas does not regret the October 7 attacks, despite the destruction it has brought to Gaza and its population. He denied that Hamas insurgents targeted civilians during the attacks — despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary — and said the operation achieved its goal of drawing global attention back to the Palestinian issue.
Furthermore, he noted that Israeli attempts to eradicate Hamas will ultimately fail to prevent future Palestinian armed uprisings.
“Let’s say they have destroyed Hamas. Have the Palestinian people disappeared?” he asked.
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2024-04-26 15:32:56
