A Hamas leader said the group could accept creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and a long-term truce with Israel, signalling a possible new overture to end hostilities. Hamas, sworn to Israel's destruction, has made such offers before, but this was the first time since the death of Yasser Arafat and may reflect a softening of the group's stance before a January 9 Palestinian election.
"The whole world should seize this opportunity and build on it because this is a realistic position being taken by the Hamas movement," Hassan Youssef, the top Hamas official in the West Bank, told Reuters on Friday.
He said Hamas would accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with a capital in Jerusalem, if Israel removed all troops and Jewish settlers and stopped military operations in the territories.
"Of course, we would accept," Youssef said. "Then we can have a cease-fire for a period of time ... It may be a long period."
But he stopped short of saying Hamas would recognise Israel's right to exist or give up its claim to all of the land that was Palestine under the British mandate preceding the creation of Israel more than 50 years ago.
A number of Hamas officials have previously said they would accept an independent state in territories but only as a step toward taking over Israel.
"I am talking about establishing a state within the 1967 borders," Youssef said, referring to the lands Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
HALT TO RAIDS: Just a day before, Mahmoud al-Zahar, a Hamas leader in Gaza suggested the group was ready to consider a halt to attacks against Israel to allow a smooth Palestinian election for Arafat's successor.
But he stuck to Hamas's long-standing conditions, including a halt to Israeli raids in Palestinian areas.
Israel has always rejected such initiatives as smokescreens for Hamas to keep up a campaign of suicide bombings the group has spearheaded during a four-year-old Palestinian uprising.
In January, Hamas's Gaza chief proposed a 10-year-truce if Israel withdrew from occupied territories, an offer the Israeli government swiftly rejected. The official, Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi, was killed in an Israeli air strike in April.
Hamas's latest overtures follow efforts by PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas, the favourite in the presidential race, to coax militants into suspending attacks on Israelis before a Palestinian election the militant group is boycotting.
Abbas is the candidate for Fatah, the dominant Palestinian faction, which seeks a state side-by-side with Israel.
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