Hamas offers olive branch to Israel on suicide bombings

THE founder of the Palestinian Muslim militant group Hamas said yesterday it would consider halting suicide attacks on Israelis if Israel withdrew from West Bank cities and took other measures.

"Basically what I would say to the occupation army is to leave ... the Palestinian cities in all the West Bank that were occupied ...," Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin told reporters in the Gaza Strip. "And stop your aggression, demolishing homes. Release prisoners and stop assassinations. Once the occupation and all those measures against our people stop, we are ready to totally study stopping martyrdom operations, in a positive way."

Hamas gunmen and suicide bombers have targeted Israelis both inside Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war. Yassin did not clarify whether any reconsidered position on attacks would apply both to Israel and to Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, or be limited geographically.

Hamas opposes Israel's right to exist and has carried out suicide bombings since 1993 interim peace accords which it rejected. Israel reoccupied seven of eight West Bank cities, areas transferred to Palestinian self-rule under the interim accords, after suicide attacks killed 26 Israelis in Jerusalem in June.

"Leave its occupation of us, leave our people," Yassin said, when asked what Israel had to do for Hamas to halt attacks. "Leave our villages and lands."