(CNN) — Some Hamas officials say the militant group could abandon the armed struggle against Israel if the Palestinians gain an independent state in territories captured by Israel in the 1967 war.
The message suggests a softening of Hamas’ position, since its fate is at stake with the destruction that Israel did in Gaza, a place that Hamas ruled before the war. The Palestinian militant group has long called for the destruction of the Jewish state.
Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’ Istanbul-based political bureau, told CNN on Thursday that the group would agree to disarm if an independent Palestinian state were established.
“If an independent state is created with its capital in Jerusalem, and if the right of return of refugees is preserved at the same time, Al Qassam could be integrated as (a future) national army,” he said, referring to the group’s armed wing.
Hamas has rejected the two-state solution that would entail the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel and instead advocated the creation of a Palestinian state in all of historic Palestine that today encompasses Israel, the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem occupied and Gaza.
Mustafa Barghouti, president of the Palestinian National Initiative, said he was not aware that Hamas had offered to lay down its arms earlier, but said it would be a significant step if it were true.
“It is significant in the sense that Palestinians are resisting the occupation because there is occupation,” he told CNN. “If the occupation did not exist, they would not need to resist it,” she added, referring to Israel’s military control of the territories captured in 1967, where millions of Palestinians live.
An offer criticized for being a public relations stunt
Efraim Inbar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, said that demanding that Palestinian refugees return to their ancestral homes in what is now Israel would be a failure, as it would amount to “the destruction of the State of Israel” where Jews form the majority.
Inbar called Hamas’ offer a public relations stunt aimed at Western nations.
“They see that there is a lot of support in the Western world (for the Palestinians) (…) and they try to show that they are the good guys, and Israel the bad guys, because Israel will say no,” he said.
The United States and European states can use this to ask Israel “to give them a chance,” he said, but Israel is likely to take the gesture “with a grain of salt.”
Netanyahu’s government vowed to eliminate Hamas after it led an attack on Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping 250 others.
On Wednesday, a senior Hamas official, Khalil al-Hayya, told The Associated Press (AP) in Istanbul that the 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.
Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza in the 1967 war. Those territories are considered occupied under international law and by most of the international community, and it is there that the Palestinians want to establish a future state. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long opposed that prospect, arguing that it would jeopardize the security of his country.
Hayyah also told the AP that Hamas would join the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to form a unified government for Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas refrained from joining the PLO, a grouping of Palestinian factions that signed peace agreements with it in the 1990s.
Barghouti said Hamas indicated as early as 2007, when it headed a Palestinian national unity government, that it was willing to accept a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders. Hamas, he added, was also in favor of joining the PLO, but such a measure would not automatically amount to recognition of Israel or the Oslo Accords that the PLO signed with that country in the 1990s.
Hamas did not issue an official statement outlining the concessions its officials touted, and it is unknown whether statements made by its officials abroad reflect the thinking of its military wing on the ground in Gaza.
When asked if Hayyah’s statement to the AP amounts to a change in Hamas’s position, Naim told CNN that his comments reflect the group’s messaging since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas.
Israel has so far failed to achieve its stated goal of eliminating Hamas from Gaza, with no major leaders of the group captured or killed, but it has significantly reduced its military capabilities and ability to govern there as its bombing campaign leaves the enclave. destroyed.
Last week, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said at a news conference in Doha, the capital of Qatar, that Hamas is willing to operate solely https://twitter.com/trtworld/status/1780641148656116213 once a Palestinian state is created, and cited meetings between the group and Turkish officials.
Fidan asked Hamas “to express its positions clearly.”
Inbar, the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, said that after October 7, Israelis treat Hamas as a hostile entity and want to see it defeated. “We understand that they will try to rebuild the military infrastructure” after Israel destroys it, he said, adding that Israel will continue to “mow the grass,” referring to occasional military operations to diminish Hamas’s military capacity.
CNN’s Zeena Saifi and Abeer Salman contributed to this report.
