Hamas: We will disarm if Palestinian state agreed
A top Hamas political official says the Islamic militant group is willing to agree to a truce of five years or more with Israel and would lay down its weapons and convert into a political party if an independent Palestinian state is established along pre-1967 borders.
The comments by Khalil al-Hayya in an interview with The Associated Press this week came amid a stalemate in months of ceasefire talks.
The suggestion Hamas would disarm appeared to be a significant concession by the militant group officially committed to Israel’s destruction.
But it’s unlikely Israel would consider such a scenario. It has vowed to crush Hamas after the deadly October 7 attacks that triggered the war, and its current leadership is adamantly opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state on lands Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.
Al-Hayya, a high-ranking Hamas official who has represented the Palestinian militants in negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage exchange, struck a sometimes defiant and other times conciliatory tone.
Speaking to the AP in Istanbul, AlHayya said Hamas wants to join the Palestine Liberation Organisation, headed 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 the international resolutions”, along Israel’s pre-1967 borders.
If that happens, he said, the group’s military wing would dissolve.
“All the experiences of people who fought against occupiers, when they became independent and obtained their rights and their state, what have these forces done? They have turned into political parties and their defending fighting forces have turned into the national army,” he said.
Over the years, Hamas has sometimes moderated its public position on the possibility of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. But its political programme still officially “rejects any alternative to the full liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea” — the area reaching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, which includes lands that now make up Israel.
Al-Hayya did not say whether his apparent embrace of a two-state solution would amount to an end to the Palestinian conflict with Israel or an interim step toward the group’s stated goal of destroying Israel.
There was no immediate reaction from Israel or the Palestinian Authority — the internationally recognised self-ruled government Hamas drove out when it seized Gaza in 2007, a year after winning Palestinian parliamentary elections. After the Hamas takeover of Gaza, the Palestinian Authority was left with administering semi-autonomous pockets 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 Mideast war.
The international community overwhelmingly supports a two-state solution, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-line government rejects it.
The war in Gaza has dragged on for nearly seven months and ceasefire negotiations have stalled. The war began with the deadly October 7 attack on southern Israel in which Hamasled militants killed about 1200 people, mostly civilians.
Militants dragged some 250 hostages into the enclave. The ensuing Israeli offensive in Gaza has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to local health authorities, and displaced 80 per cent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million.
Israel is now preparing for an offensive in the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians have fled to.
Israel says it has dismantled most of the two dozen Hamas battalions since the start of the war, but four are holed up in Rafah. Israel argues a Rafah offensive is necessary to achieve victory over Hamas.
Al-Hayya said such an offensive would not destroy Hamas. He said contacts between the political leadership outside and military leadership inside Gaza were “uninterrupted” and “contacts, decisions and directions are made in consultation” between the two groups.
Israeli forces “have not destroyed more than 20 per cent of [Hamas’] capabilities, neither human nor in the field,” he asserted. “If they can’t finish [Hamas] off, what is the solution? The solution is to go to consensus.”
In November, a week-long ceasefire saw the release of more than 100 hostages in exchange for thousands of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. But talks for a longer-term truce and release of the remaining hostages are now frozen. Key interlocutor Qatar is undertaking a “reassessment” of its role as mediator.
Most of Hamas’ top political officials, previously based in Qatar, have left the Gulf country in the past week and travelled to Turkey, where Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Al-Hayya denied a permanent move of the group’s main political office is in the works and said Hamas wants to see Qatar continue in its capacity as mediator in the talks.
Israeli and US officials have accused Hamas of not being serious about a deal.
Al-Hayya denied this, but said Hamas will not back down from its demands for a permanent ceasefire and full withdrawal of Israeli troops. Israel says it will continue military operations until Hamas is definitively defeated and will retain a security presence in Gaza afterwards.
Al-Hayya said Hamas does not regret the October 7 attacks, despite the destruction it has brought down on Gaza and its people. He denied Hamas militants had targeted civilians — despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary — and said the operation succeeded in its goal of bringing the Palestinian issue back to the world’s attention.
If they can’t finish [Hamas] off, what is the solution?
Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas official