ISTANBUL — A senior Hamas political official told The Associated Press that the Islamic militant group is willing to accept a truce of five years or more with Israel and would lay down its weapons and become a political party if an independent Palestinian state is established within throughout the previous stage. -1967 borders.
Khalil al-Hayya’s comments in an interview Wednesday came amid a stalemate in months of ceasefire talks. The suggestion that Hamas would disarm appeared to be a significant concession by the militant group officially committed to Israel’s destruction.
But Israel is unlikely to consider such a scenario. He has vowed to crush Hamas after the deadly October attack. 7 attacks that sparked the war, and its current leadership is adamantly opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state on lands Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
Al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official who has represented Palestinian militants in negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage exchange, adopted a sometimes defiant and other times conciliatory tone.
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 Hamas would accept “a fully sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the return of Palestinian refugees in accordance with international resolutions,” along Israel’s pre-1967 borders.
If that happens, he said, the group’s military wing would disband.
“All the experiences of the people who fought against the occupiers, when they became independent and obtained their rights and their State, what have these forces done? “They have become political parties and their defending combat forces have become the national army,” he said.
Over the years, Hamas has at times moderated its public position regarding the possibility of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. But his political program still officially “rejects any alternative to the full liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea,” referring to the area stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, which includes lands that now form Israel.
Al-Hayya did not say whether his apparent adoption of a two-state solution would amount to an end to the Palestinian conflict with Israel or an intermediate step toward the group’s stated goal of destroying Israel.
There was no immediate reaction from Israel or the Palestinian Authority, the internationally recognized self-governing government that Hamas ousted when it seized Gaza in 2007, a year after winning Palestinian parliamentary elections. After Hamas’ takeover of Gaza, the Palestinian Authority was left to administer semi-autonomous areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian Authority hopes to establish an independent state in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. While the international community overwhelmingly supports that two-state solution, the hardline government of Prime Minister Israeli Benjamin Netanyahu rejects it.
The war in Gaza has dragged on for almost seven months and ceasefire negotiations have stalled. The war began with the deadly October. The September 7 attack on southern Israel in which Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The militants dragged some 250 hostages into the enclave. The ensuing Israeli bombing and ground offensive in Gaza has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to local health authorities, and displaced around 80% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million. population.
Israel is now preparing for an offensive on the southern city of Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians have fled.
Israel says it has dismantled most of Hamas’ initial two dozen battalions since the start of the war, but that the remaining four are in Rafah. Israel maintains that an offensive in Rafah is necessary to achieve victory over Hamas.
Al-Hayya said such an offensive would fail to destroy Hamas. He said contacts between outside political leaders and military leaders inside Gaza are “uninterrupted” by the war and that “contacts, decisions and directions are made in consultation” between the two groups.
Israeli forces “have not destroyed more than 20% of (Hamas’) capabilities, neither human nor on the ground,” he said. “If they can’t put an end to (Hamas), what is the solution? to consensus.”
In November, after a week-long ceasefire, more than 100 hostages were released in exchange for thousands of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. But talks for a longer-term truth and the release of the remaining hostages are now frozen, with each side accusing the other of intransigence. The main interlocutor, Qatar, has said in recent days that it is carrying out a “re-evaluation” of its role as mediator.
Most of Hamas’s top political officials, previously based in Qatar, left the Gulf country last week and traveled to Turkey, where Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Saturday. Al-Hayya denied that a permanent move of the group’s main political office is being prepared and said Hamas wants Qatar to continue its role as mediator in the talks.
Israeli and American officials have accused Hamas of not being serious about a deal.
Al-Hayya denied this and said Hamas has made concessions regarding the number of Palestinian prisoners it wants to release in exchange for the remaining Israeli hostages. He said the group does not know exactly how many hostages remain in Gaza and are still alive.
But he said Hamas will not back down on its demands for a permanent ceasefire and full withdrawal of Israeli troops, which Israel has opposed. Israel says it will continue military operations until Hamas is definitively defeated and maintains a security presence. in Gaza later.
“If we are not sure that the war will end, why would he hand over the prisoners?” the Hamas leader said of the remaining hostages.
Al-Hayya also implicitly threatened that Hamas would attack Israeli or other forces that may be stationed around a floating dock the United States is fighting to build along the Gaza coast to deliver aid by sea.
“We categorically reject any non-Palestinian presence in Gaza, whether at sea or on land, and we will treat any military force present in these places, Israeli or not… as an occupying power,” he said.
Al-Hayya said Hamas has no regrets about the October attack. 7 attacks, despite the destruction it has caused in Gaza and its population. He denied that Hamas militants had targeted civilians during the attacks – despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary – and said the operation achieved its goal of drawing the world’s attention back to the Palestinian issue.
And, he said, Israeli attempts to eradicate Hamas will ultimately fail to prevent future Palestinian armed uprisings.
“Let’s say they have destroyed Hamas. Are the Palestinian people gone?” she asked.
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AP journalist Khalil Hamra in Istanbul contributed to this report.