Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas officialMohamed El-Shahed / AFP
Published 04/25/2024 08:43
In an interview with the Associated Press, a senior Hamas political official said the Islamic terrorist group is willing to agree to a five-year or longer truce with Israel and that it would lay aside its weapons and convert into a political party if a state independent Palestinian settlement was established along the pre-1967 borders.
The comments by Khalil al-Hayya, a member of the terrorist group’s central decision-making committee, in an interview on Wednesday, 24, came amid a months-long impasse in ceasefire negotiations. The suggestion that Hamas would disarm with the creation of a Palestinian state has been made other times.
But Israel is unlikely to consider such a scenario. The country promised to crush Hamas after the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks that sparked the war, and its current leadership opposes the creation of a Palestinian state.
Al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official who represented Hamas terrorists in negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage exchange, said the terrorist group 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, the Six-Day War, when Israel occupied more territories in the Middle East.
If that happens, he said, the group’s military wing will disband. “All the experiences of people who fought against the occupiers, when they became independent and got their rights and their state, what did these forces do? They turned into political parties and their Defense forces turned into the national army,” he said .
Over the years, Hamas has at times moderated its public stance on the possibility of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. But his political program still officially “rejects any alternative to the total liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea” – referring to the area stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, which includes the lands that today constitute Israel. The group openly advocates the extermination of the Jewish State.
Al-Hayya did not say whether his two-state solution would mean an end to the Palestinian conflict with Israel or a tentative step toward the group’s stated goal of destroying Israel.
There was no immediate reaction from Israel or the Palestinian Authority, the internationally recognized autonomous government that Hamas expelled from the Gaza Strip when it won elections in the enclave in 2007. After Hamas took over Gaza, the Palestinian Authority was left to administer pockets in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian Authority hopes to establish an independent state in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. Although the international community largely supports this two-state solution, there has been a more than two-decade impasse in negotiations, and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu rejects it.
The war in Gaza has been dragging on for almost seven months and ceasefire negotiations are at a standstill. The war began with the October 7 terrorist attack in southern Israel, in which Hamas killed around 1,200 people, most of them civilians.
The terrorists dragged around 250 hostages to the enclave. The Israeli bombing and ensuing ground offensive in Gaza killed more than 34,000 Palestinians and displaced around 80% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million.
Israel is now preparing for an offensive on the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians have fled. Israel says it has dismantled most of Hamas’s initial 20-plus battalions since the start of the war, but that the remaining four are hidden in Rafah. Israel argues that an offensive on the city is necessary to achieve victory over Hamas.
Al-Hayya said such an offensive would not succeed in destroying Hamas. He said contacts between the external political leadership and the military leadership inside Gaza are “uninterrupted” due to the war and that “contacts, decisions and guidance are made in consultation” between the two groups.
Israeli forces “did not destroy more than 20% of (Hamas’) capabilities, neither human nor in the field,” he said. “If they can’t end Hamas, what is the solution? The solution is to reach a consensus.”
Prolonged ceasefire attempts
In November, a week-long ceasefire resulted in the release of more than 100 hostages in exchange for thousands of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. But negotiations for a long-term truce and the release of the remaining hostages are frozen, with each side accusing the other of intransigence. The main interlocutor, Qatar, has said in recent days that it is undertaking a “reassessment” of its role as mediator.
Most of Hamas’ 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 on Saturday.
Al-Hayya denied that a permanent change of the group’s main political office was in the works and said Hamas wanted Qatar to continue in its capacity as mediator in the negotiations.
Israeli and American officials accused Hamas of not taking a deal seriously. Al-Hayya denied this, saying that 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 also said that Hamas will not back down on its demands for a permanent ceasefire and the full withdrawal of Israeli troops, two demands that Israel has refused. Israel says it will continue military operations until Hamas is definitively defeated and will maintain a security presence in Gaza thereafter.
“If we are not sure that the war will end, why would I hand over the prisoners?” the Hamas leader said of the remaining hostages.
Al-Hayya also threatened an attack on Israeli forces or other forces that might be positioned around a floating pier that the US is striving 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 will deal with any military force present there, Israeli or otherwise, as an occupying power,” he said.
Al-Hayya stated that Hamas does not regret the October 7 attacks, despite the destruction they caused in Gaza. He denied that Hamas terrorists attacked civilians during the attacks – despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary – and said the operation was successful in its aim of bringing the Palestinian issue back to the world’s attention.
And, according to him, Israeli attempts to eradicate Hamas would ultimately not prevent future Palestinian armed uprisings. “Let’s say they destroyed Hamas. Are the Palestinian people gone?” he asked.
