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Incoming Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh gestures while speaking the media in Gaza, Saturday. (AP)
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| February 26, 2006 |
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The Palestinian prime minister-designate, Ismail Haniyeh, says his Hamas group would establish a "peace in stages" if Israel were to withdraw to the borders it held before the 1967 Mideast war, The Washington Post newspaper reported on its Web site Saturday.
This would be the first time that Hamas, which is sworn to Israel's destruction, has talked about peace with the Jewish state. But Haniyeh was evasive when asked if Hamas would recognize Israel and vague about how he sees the final borders of a Palestinian state.
Israel, meanwhile, has already rejected the conditions Haniyeh imposed for such a peace, namely, ceding all of Judea, Samaria, and east Jerusalem, and allowing Palestinian refugees the right to return to Israel, where they could eventually outnumber Jews.
Hamas has refused to renounce its violently anti-Israel ideology since sweeping Palestinian elections last month. But it has largely observed a yearlong truce and said it would consider a long-term armistice if Israel were to withdraw from Judea, Samaria and east Jerusalem, territory that Israel captured along with the Gaza Strip in the 1967 war, and Palestinians want for a future state.
In a telephone interview with The Washington Post, Haniyeh went a step further, saying, "If Israel withdraws to the '67 borders, then we will establish a peace in stages."
Asked to define what that meant, Haniyeh said it would be based on a long-term truce. Prodded on whether it could ultimately lead to the obliteration of the Jewish people, he replied, "We do not have any feelings of animosity toward Jews. We do not wish to throw them into the sea. All we seek is to be given our land back, not to harm anybody."
"We are not interested in a vicious cycle of violence," he added. "If peace brings us our rights, then this is good."
Israel, which has said it wouldn't deal with a government in which Hamas takes part, wouldn't comment on Haniyeh's remarks .
Pressed on whether Hamas recognized Israel's right to exist, Haniyeh countered, "Which Israel should we recognize? The Israel of 1917; the Israel of 1936; the Israel of 1948; the Israel of 1956; or the Israel of 1967? Which borders and which Israel? Israel has to recognize first the Palestinian state and its borders and then we will know what we are talking about."
Pressed again, he said, "If Israel declares that it will give the Palestinian people a state and give them back all their rights, then we are ready to recognize them."
It was not clear what rights he referred to. Israel has accepted a two-state solution, though not along the 1967 lines, and over the summer it acted unilaterally to set borders, by evacuating Gaza.
Haniyeh doesn't speak English, and Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told The Associated Press that The Post must have mistranslated Haniyeh's remarks, because the group's platform doesn't include a possible "peace in stages," but rather, a "solution" in stages.
"The group would accept a gradual solution that is based on a truce whereby the occupation withdraws completely from lands occupied in '67 and (from) Jerusalem," Abu Zuhri said, calling it a "transitional solution that could be long-term."
"We consider it a transitional solution that does not give up the rest of the land," he said, without specifying what a permanent solution would be, or whether the "rest of the land" referred to Israel.
AP contributed to this report.
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