Hamas sets down conditions for peace

THE Palestinians’ incoming prime minister suggested Hamas could one day make peace with Israel, but undercut his statement by saying his militant group wouldn’t disarm or recognise Israel unless it recognised a Palestinian state within boundaries the Israelis reject.

Israel dismissed the comments as doubletalk.

Asked in an interview with CBS News if he could foresee a day when he would be invited to sign a peace agreement with Israel, Ismail Haniyeh replied: “Let’s hope so.”

But Hamas, which won Palestinian parliamentary elections in a landslide in January, has rebuffed Israel’s conditions for talks, namely, that the group disarm and recognise the Jewish state’s right to exist.

Mr Haniyeh said Hamas wouldn’t meet those conditions for talks unless Israel “recognised a Palestinian state within the boundaries of Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem”.

Israel, while accepting the principle of an independent Palestinian state, has often said it has no intention of returning to the borders it held before capturing those territories in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Mr Haniyeh is considered a pragmatist, but he does not call the shots in the Palestinian government. Major Hamas decisions are taken in secret by a group of leaders inside and outside Gaza and the West Bank.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev accused Hamas of spewing “double meanings, verbal gymnastics and word games” in the hope of softening the West’s image of the group as a terrorist organisation.

The US and Europe have threatened to withhold some of the funding they inject into the cash-starved Palestinian Authority unless Hamas changes its ways.

There are three conditions for Hamas to receive international legitimacy: recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept Middle East peacemaking, Mr Regev said.

Last month, Mr Haniyeh said Hamas would establish “peace in stages” if Israel would withdraw to its boundaries before the 1967 war. But he immediately distanced himself from those remarks by saying Hamas was interested in a long-term truce with Israel, but did not seek peace with it.

Following Hamas’s election, Israel declared it would have nothing to do with a government that incorporated the militant group.

Hamas intends to present its cabinet to parliament for approval on Monday after failing to persuade any other party or independent lawmaker to join a coalition.