ISTANBUL – A senior Hamas political official told the Associated Press that the Islamic militant group was willing to conform to a five-year or longer ceasefire with Israel and that it might lay down its weapons and transform itself right into a political party if an independent Palestinian state was established along the pre-1967 borders.
Khalil al-Hayya's comments in an interview on Wednesday got here amid a stalemate over months of talks over a ceasefire in Gaza. The proposal to disarm Hamas gave the impression to be a major concession from the militant group, which officially advocates the destruction of Israel.
But it’s unlikely that Israel would consider such a scenario. They have vowed to dismantle Hamas after the deadly Oct. 7 attacks that sparked the war, and its current leadership strongly opposes the creation of a Palestinian state on land captured by Israel within the 1967 Middle East war.
Al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official who has represented the Palestinian militants in negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage exchange, struck a tone that was sometimes defiant, sometimes conciliatory.
Speaking to the AP in Istanbul, Al-Hayya said Hamas wanted to hitch 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 people who fought against the occupiers when they became independent and gained their rights and their state – what did these forces do? They have turned into political parties and their defending forces have turned into the national army,” he said.
Over the years, Hamas has sometimes softened its public position on the opportunity of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. But his political program still officially rejects “any alternative to the complete liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea” – referring to the realm from the Jordan to the Mediterranean, which incorporates areas that now form Israel.
Al-Hayya didn’t say whether his apparent endorsement of a two-state solution amounted to an end to the Palestinian conflict with Israel or an interim step toward the group's stated goal of destroying Israel.
Ophir Falk, a foreign policy adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, declined to comment on Al-Hayya's comments, calling him a “senior terrorist.” But he said Hamas had broken an earlier ceasefire with its attack on southern Israel on October 7, through which militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Militants dragged about 250 hostages into the enclave.
Israel's subsequent bombing and ground offensive killed greater than 34,000 Palestinians, most of them women and kids, and displaced about 80% of Gaza's 2.3 million residents, in response to local health authorities.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu's government is committed to destroying Hamas' military and governance capabilities in Gaza, freeing the hostages and ensuring that Gaza does not pose a threat to Israel and the rest of the civilized world in the future,” he said . “These goals will be achieved.”
There was no immediate response from the PLO or the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, the internationally recognized self-governing government that ousted Hamas by seizing Gaza in 2007, a yr after winning Palestinian parliamentary elections. After Hamas took over the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Authority was left administering semi-autonomous parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian Authority hopes to determine an independent state within the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, areas captured by Israel within the 1967 Middle East war. While the international community overwhelmingly supports such a two-state solution, Netanyahu's hardline government rejects it.
Almost seven months after the beginning of the Gaza war, ceasefire negotiations have stalled. Israel is now preparing for an offensive within the southern city of Rafah, where greater than 1,000,000 Palestinians have fled.
Israel says it has disbanded many of the first two dozen Hamas battalions for the reason that war began, however the 4 remaining are holed up in Rafah. Israel argues that a Rafah offensive is mandatory to attain victory over Hamas.
Al-Hayya said such an offensive wouldn’t give you the chance to destroy Hamas. He said contacts between the political leadership outside and the military leadership inside Gaza were “uninterrupted” by the war and “contacts, decisions and instructions were made in consultation” between the 2 groups.
Israeli forces “have destroyed no more than 20% of Hamas’s capabilities, either human or in the field,” he claimed. “If they (Hamas) can’t finish it, what’s the solution? The solution lies in consensus.”
In November, a week-long ceasefire released greater than 100 hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. But talks over a longer-term ceasefire and the discharge of the remaining hostages at the moment are frozen, with both sides accusing the opposite of intransigence. Key interlocutor Qatar has said in recent days that it’s “reassessing” its role as a 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 on Saturday Erdogan met. Al-Hayya denied that a everlasting change to the group's top political office was within the works and said Hamas wanted Qatar to proceed acting in its role as a mediator within the talks.
Israeli and U.S. officials have accused Hamas of not being serious concerning the deal.
Al-Hayya denied this and said Hamas had made concessions on the variety of Palestinian prisoners it desired to release in exchange for the remaining Israeli hostages. He said the group didn’t know exactly what number of hostages were still in Gaza and alive.
“If we are not sure that the war will end, why should I 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 is perhaps stationed around a floating pier that the United States wants to construct along the Gaza Strip 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 otherwise, as an occupying force,” he said .
Al-Hayya said Hamas doesn’t regret the October 7 attacks, despite the destruction they inflicted on Gaza and its people. He denied that Hamas militants attacked civilians within the attacks – despite overwhelming evidence on the contrary – and said the operation had achieved its goal of bringing the Palestinian issue back to the world's attention.
And, he said, Israeli attempts to root out Hamas would ultimately fail to stop future Palestinian armed uprisings.
“Let’s say they destroyed Hamas. “Is the Palestinian people gone?” he asked.
Associated Press journalists Khalil Hamra in Istanbul and Julia Frankel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
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