Ramallah, occupied West Bank – Israel and its Western allies have long viewed the Gaza-based Palestinian armed group and political movement, Hamas, as illegitimate and have refused to engage with it, calling it a “terrorist organization.”
This narrative has become even more evident since October 7, when Hamas launched an attack just outside the besieged Gaza Strip on Israeli territory, killing some 1,140 people, Israeli officials said.
Israel launched a brutal military campaign in the Gaza Strip as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has equated Hamas with ISIL (ISIS) and the Nazis, vowed to “eradicate” the Palestinian group in the wake attacks of October 7.
More than 25,000 Palestinians were killed and 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents were displaced in one of the most violent military attacks in modern history, which many have called a “genocide.” South Africa has filed a complaint against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for genocide.
Since October 7, Israel has described Hamas as an existential threat. He argued that he needed to destroy the group.
Yet in 2017, Hamas revised its original 1988 charter to recognize, in effect, a two-state solution – and therefore the existence of Israel as a legitimate entity. This, even as Israel insists it can no longer allow Hamas to exist and Israeli politicians, led by Netanyahu, have ruled out a two-state solution.
On Sunday, Netanyahu rejected a Hamas proposal to end the war and release more than 100 captives held by the group, in exchange for the withdrawal of Israeli forces, the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons and recognition of Hamas’s governance of Gaza.
A look at the history of Hamas – one of Palestine’s most popular resistance fronts – suggests that its political leaders have, over the years, offered numerous long-term truces or ceasefires to Israel in exchange for the realization of a sovereign and independent Palestinian state.
Israel rejected these offers, arguing that Hamas could not be trusted to adhere to a long-term ceasefire, and insisting that proposals for short-term pauses in fighting were not sincere and strategically aimed only at helping the armed movement to regroup after losses.
Sunday was just the latest instance of Israel rejecting these offers.
Timeline of Hamas truce proposals:
- 1988: Just a year after the group’s creation, Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar met with former senior Israeli officials Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres and proposed that Israel withdraw from the territories occupied in 1967 in exchange for a truce. This was before Hamas built its armed wing, the Qassam Brigades. Furthermore, in 1988, the founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, himself indicated his willingness to negotiate with Israel on the condition that it “first recognize the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and return on his land.
- 1994: Hamas offered a truce to Israel following the kidnapping and killing of Israeli soldier Nachshon Wachsman. A year earlier, the Palestinian Authority (PA) accepted the proposal for a Palestinian state comprising the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Hamas accepted this proposal.
- 1995: Hamas again proposed a 10-year truce based on the same condition of Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories.
- 1996: In March, after Israel assassinated Hamas military leader Yahya Ayyash in January, the movement proposed a ceasefire.
- 1997: September: Days before Israel attempted to assassinate Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal in the Jordanian capital, Amman, the movement offered Israel a 10-year truce. October: After his release from Israeli prison, Hamas founder Yasin renewed the call for a ceasefire. November: Hamas again proposed a truce. The Qassam Brigades said attacks on Israeli civilians would stop if Israel stopped targeting Palestinian civilians.
- 1999: Yasin made another ceasefire offer on the condition that Israel withdraw from the 1967 territories. In a letter to European diplomats, Hamas offered to cease all hostilities in exchange for Israeli withdrawal, evacuation of settlements and the release of Palestinian prisoners.
- 2003: In December, Yasin proposed a ceasefire on the condition that Israel withdraw from the Palestinian territories. He was killed four months later in an Israeli attack.
- 2004 : Yasin’s successor and co-founder of Hamas, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, again proposed a 10-year truce. Israel killed him a month after Yasin.
- 2006: Hamas again proposed a 10-year truce that would be “automatically renewed if (Israel) commits to restoring the full and legitimate rights of the Palestinian people as part of a final solution that corresponds to what is accepted by the Palestinian people.” ‘PLO’.
- 2007: Senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh reiterated the group’s call for a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.
- 2008: Hamas leader Meshaal again proposed a 10-year truce, which he repeated a year later.
- 2014 : Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have proposed a 10-year truce in exchange for lifting the Israeli blockade and freeing Palestinian prisoners.
- 2015 : Hamas has offered a long-term ceasefire in exchange for lifting the blockade.
- 2017: Hamas presented its revised charter announcing that it accepted a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.
Hamas revises its 1988 charter
The Hamas movement was founded in 1987, twenty years after Israel’s military occupation in 1967 of the remaining Palestinian territories it had failed to conquer in 1948. Its leaders were shaped by the harsh realities of occupation, marked by mass arrests of Palestinians, expropriations of Palestinians. land and resource control.
More than half a million Palestinians were arrested and tried by Israeli military courts between 1967 and 1987, some 1,500 Palestinian homes were demolished, and thousands more were forcibly expelled.
After Hamas won the 2006 elections in Gaza, its leader Haniyeh declared that the group had accepted statehood on the 1967 borders and all decisions made by the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization ( PLO), but there were no takers.
Hamas leaders also supported the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative which called for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territories occupied in 1967, the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes from which they had been displaced since 1948, and the formation of a sovereign and independent Palestinian state. State in exchange for Arab recognition of Israel.
But Hamas’ offers have been repeatedly rejected by Israel and ignored by its Western allies, including the United States, despite Washington’s claims that it plays the role of an “honest broker” in the conflict.
“Hamas has always said it is ready to offer a truce and stop targeting civilians if the (Israeli) occupation expels its settlers,” Tareq Baconi, author of Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance.
At least 750,000 Israelis live in hundreds of settlements and fortified illegal outposts across the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the vast majority of which were built entirely or partially on private Palestinian land.
In 2017, Hamas officially amended its 1988 charter, announcing once again that it would accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders.
“From the beginning, Hamas’ thinking was clear: ‘We are not facing a religious war,’” Meshaal told Tel Aviv Tribune at the time.
“Hamas, since its creation, has been aware of the nature of the struggle against the Israeli occupier, that it is not a struggle because they are Jews, but because they are occupiers. »
Israeli officials called the new policy document “lies.” In a video, Netanyahu symbolically threw the document in the trash, saying it was an attempt to deceive the world.
“Not about Gaza”
However, some analysts say Israel has not expressed interest in a political settlement, either with Hamas or other Palestinian political parties like Fatah, which governs the occupied West Bank.
“The problem is not about Gaza,” Sari Orabi, a Ramallah-based analyst, told Tel Aviv Tribune. “Nor is it a question of whether Israel or Hamas started the war. There are daily killings and attacks in the occupied West Bank, there are attacks on the Al-Aqsa Mosque, there are prisoners and checkpoints.”
“The people of Gaza are refugees. They were isolated and separated from the rest of the Palestinian people,” he said.
The vast majority of Gaza’s population are refugees, expelled from their towns and villages in what is now the State of Israel by Zionist militias in 1948.
Analysts also accuse Israel of being responsible for the failure of the Oslo Accords, signed in 1993 and 1995, between Israel and the PLO – which was then representative of the Palestinian people.
The agreements led to the formation of the PA, a five-year interim governing body meant to lead to an independent Palestinian state comprising the occupied territory of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
However, after 30 years of existence, the Palestinian Authority has failed to create a state in the face of Israeli occupation, illegal land grabs and settlements. Hamas took control of Gaza from the Palestinian Authority in 2007.
Although Palestinians initially supported the Oslo Accords, the failure to reach a final peace deal in 1999 and the proliferation of settlement projects, particularly under Netanyahu, left many disappointed. In a leaked video in 2010, Netanyahu boasted that he had ensured that the Oslo Accords failed.
The hopes raised by the Oslo Accords turned to despair as the Israeli policies of successive governments continued to undermine the Palestinian Authority and its aspirations.
Today, the PA exercises limited administrative control over pockets of the occupied West Bank, while Israeli settlements, considered illegal under international law, have expanded rapidly. The settler population in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem has increased from 250,000 Israelis in 1993 to more than 700,000 this year.
“The Israelis wanted the Oslo (accords) because that’s how they maintain their colonization; maintaining the facade of a peace process,” Baconi said.
“Hamas was holding up a mirror to the Israelis to say: if you are really talking about the possibility of ending the occupation, then end it,” he told Tel Aviv Tribune.
“That was their offer in place of the Oslo Accords (1993) – that they would end armed resistance if Israel left the Palestinians in eastern Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. »
