Related News:
Hamas's Mashaal Says Resistance to Stop at the End of Israeli Occupation
Hamas would end its resistance if Israel retreated to the 1967 borders before the Six Day War and ended the occupation of Palestinian lands, the group’s political leader Khalid Mashaal said.
“When the occupation comes to an end, the resistance will end, as simple as that,” Mashaal said in an interview in Damascus on “The Charlie Rose Show,” broadcast yesterday. “If Israel would go to the 1967 borders,” he said, “that will be the end of the Palestinian resistance.”
Israel would have to withdraw from east Jerusalem, which would become the capital of a Palestinian state, and Palestinian refugees would have the right of return, Mashaal said. A sovereign Palestinian state will control its own borders and have its own checkpoints, and decide the nature of the future of the relationship with Israel, he said.
Mashaal’s comments reiterate those of his deputy, Mussa Abu Marzuk, who told Bloomberg News in a January 2009 interview the group’s goal is “an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip free of settlements and settlers with Jerusalem as its capital.”
Hamas was elected by Palestinians in parliamentary elections of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 2006. The group seized control of Gaza in 2007 after a brief power-sharing arrangement with President Mahmoud Abbas of the rival Fatah party ended in clashes, leaving Abbas to administer the West Bank.
Israel imposed a blockade on the impoverished strip after Hamas took control, periodically lifting restrictions to allow in humanitarian goods.
‘Complete Freedom’
“Don’t request the Palestinian people to have a certain stand from Israel while living under the Israeli occupation,” Mashaal said. “Give the Palestinian people the opportunity to live in a normal situation in a Palestinian state. And then the Palestinian people, with complete freedom, will decide.”
Mashaal said the Israelis aren’t serious about peace, and that former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and his successor Abbas have shown their willingness to recognize Israel without comparable readiness in Israel. U.S. President Barack Obama recognizes that, Mashaal said.
“Today Mahmoud Abbas was welcomed by Israel when he came to office in 2005. What did Israel do for them?” he added. “They didn’t give Mahmoud Abbas anything. So the problem is not on the Palestinian side, not the Arab side. It is with the Israeli side. And I think Obama’s administration realizes that the obstacle is not with the Palestinians or not the Arabs. It’s with Israelis and Netanyahu.”
Israel’s continued presence in the West Bank, where he said violence against the Jewish state had come to a halt because of measures enforced by Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, illustrates that Israel isn’t serious about ending the occupation, Mashaal said. He said recognition of the state of Israel is something to be decided by the people of a future Palestinian state.
Mashaal said he was against the targeting of civilians and condemned the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. as well as terrorist attacks in London and Spain saying they are unacceptable and condemnable. He said it is important for those who want to stop terrorism to ask why such events take place and to address grievances of those living in Muslim and Arab world, like the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
To contact the reporter on this story: Massoud A. Derhally in Beirut, Lebanon at mderhally@bloomberg.net
Rate These Stories
Rate this Page