Ramallah, occupied West Financial institution – Israel and its Western allies have lengthy dismissed the Gaza-based Palestinian armed group and political motion, Hamas, as illegitimate and have refused to interact with it, labelling it as a “terrorist organisation”.
This narrative has change into ever extra obvious since October 7, when Hamas launched an assault simply exterior the besieged Gaza Strip on Israeli territory, killing some 1,140 individuals, Israeli officers mentioned.
Israel launched a brutal army marketing campaign on the Gaza Strip as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has equated Hamas with ISIL (ISIS) and Nazis, pledged to “eradicate” the Palestinian group within the wake of the October 7 assaults.
Greater than 25,000 Palestinians have been killed and 90 % of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants has been displaced in one of the vital violent army assaults in trendy historical past, which many have labelled as “genocide”. South Africa has taken Israel to the Worldwide Court docket of Justice (ICJ) on prices of genocide.
Since October 7, Israel has described Hamas as an existential menace. It has argued that it must destroy the group.
But, in 2017, Hamas revised its authentic 1988 constitution to recognise, in impact, a two-state answer — and due to this fact the existence of Israel as a reputable entity. This, whilst Israel insists it may possibly not permit Hamas to exist, and as Israeli politicians, led by Netanyahu, have dominated out a two-state answer.
On Sunday, Netanyahu rejected a Hamas proposal to finish the warfare and launch greater than 100 captives held by the group, in change for a withdrawal of Israeli forces, the discharge of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and recognition of Hamas governance over Gaza.
A glance into the historical past of Hamas — amongst Palestine’s hottest resistance fronts — means that its political management has, through the years, proposed quite a few long-term truces or ceasefires to Israel in change for the realisation of a sovereign impartial Palestinian state.
Israel has rejected these gives, arguing that Hamas couldn’t be trusted to stick to any long-term ceasefire, and insisting that the proposals for short-term pauses in preventing have been insincere and strategically aimed solely at serving to the armed motion regroup from losses.
Sunday was solely the most recent occasion of Israel rebuffing these gives.
A timeline of Hamas truce proposals:
- 1988: Only one 12 months after the group was based, Hamas chief Mahmoud al-Zahar met the late prime Israeli officers Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, and proposed that Israel withdraw from the 1967-occupied territories in change for a truce. This was earlier than Hamas had constructed its armed wing, the Qassam Brigades. Additionally, in 1988, Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmad Yasin himself indicated a willingness to barter with Israel beneath the situation that it “first acknowledge the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and right of return to their land”.
- 1994: Hamas provided a truce to Israel after the kidnapping and killing of Israeli soldier Nachshon Wachsman. A 12 months earlier, the Palestinian Authority (PA) had accepted the proposal of a Palestinian state comprised of the West Financial institution, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Hamas agreed to that proposal.
- 1995: Hamas once more proposed a 10-year truce primarily based on the identical situation of Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories.
- 1996: In March, after Israel assassinated Hamas army chief Yahya Ayyash in January, the motion provided a ceasefire.
- 1997: September: Days earlier than Israel tried to assassinate Hamas political chief Khaled Meshaal within the Jordanian capital, Amman, the motion provided Israel a 10-year truce. October: After his launch from Israeli jail, Hamas founder Yasin renewed the decision for a ceasefire. November: Hamas once more proposed a truce. The Qassam Brigades mentioned assaults towards Israeli civilians would cease if Israel stopped focusing on Palestinian civilians.
- 1999: Yasin made one other ceasefire supply offered Israel withdrew from the 1967 territories. In a letter to European diplomats, Hamas provided to stop all hostilities in change for Israeli withdrawal, evacuation of settlements, and launch of Palestinian prisoners.
- 2003: In December, Yasin provided a ceasefire on the situation that Israel withdraw from the Palestinian territories. He was killed 4 months later in an Israeli assault.
- 2004: Yasin’s successor and Hamas co-founder Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi once more proposed a 10-year truce. Israel killed him one month after Yasin.
- 2006: Hamas once more provided a 10-year truce that may be “automatically renewed if [Israel] commits to restoring the full and legitimate rights of the Palestinian people to them within a final solution that matches what is accepted by the PLO”.
- 2007: Senior Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh repeated the group’s name for a Palestinian state inside the 1967 borders.
- 2008: Hamas chief Meshaal once more provided a 10-year truce, which he repeated a 12 months later.
- 2014: Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad provided a 10-year truce in change for the lifting of the Israeli blockade and launch of Palestinian prisoners.
- 2015: Hamas proposed a long-term ceasefire in change for the lifting of the blockade.
- 2017: Hamas offered its revised constitution saying that it accepted a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.
Hamas revises its 1988 constitution
The Hamas motion was based in 1987, 20 years after Israel’s 1967 army occupation of the remaining Palestinian territories it didn’t seize in 1948. Its leaders have been formed by the laborious realities of occupation, which was marked by mass arrests of Palestinians, expropriation of Palestinian lands and management of assets.
Greater than half one million Palestinians have been arrested and tried in Israel’s military-run courts between 1967 and 1987, some 1,500 Palestinian houses have been demolished, and 1000’s of different individuals have been forcibly deported.
After Hamas gained the 2006 elections in Gaza, its chief Haniyeh mentioned the group accepted a state on the 1967 borders and all the selections taken by the PA and the Palestine Liberation Group (PLO), however there have been no takers.
Hamas leaders have additionally backed the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative that known as for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from territories occupied in 1967, the suitable of Palestinian refugees to return to the houses they’ve been displaced from since 1948, and the formation of a sovereign impartial Palestinian state in return for Arab recognition of Israel.
However Hamas’s gives have been repeatedly dismissed by Israel and ignored by its Western allies, together with the US, regardless of Washington’s claims of enjoying the function of an “honest broker” within the battle.
“Hamas has always said that they are ready to offer a truce and to stop targeting civilians if the [Israeli] occupation removes its settlers,” Tareq Baconi, writer of Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance, instructed Al Jazeera.
At the very least 750,000 Israelis dwell in a whole lot of fortified unlawful settlements and outposts throughout the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Financial institution and East Jerusalem, the overwhelming majority of which have been constructed both solely or partially on non-public Palestinian land.
In 2017, Hamas formally amended its 1988 constitution, saying as soon as once more that it will settle for a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders.
“The Hamas thinking from the very start was clear: ‘We are not facing a religious war’,” Meshaal instructed Al Jazeera on the time.
“Hamas, ever since its inception, realises 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 officers dismissed the brand new coverage paper as “lies”. In a video, Netanyahu symbolically threw the doc right into a bin, saying it was an try to deceive the world.
‘Not about Gaza’
Nevertheless, some analysts say that Israel has not proven curiosity in a political settlement, whether or not with Hamas or different Palestinian political events similar to Fatah, which governs the occupied West Financial institution.
“The issue is not about Gaza,” Sari Orabi, a Ramallah-based analyst, instructed Al Jazeera. “It’s also not about whether Israel or Hamas started the war. There are daily killings and assaults in the occupied West Bank, there are attacks on Al-Aqsa Mosque, there are prisoners and checkpoints.”
“The people in Gaza are refugees. They were isolated and separated from the rest of the Palestinian people,” he mentioned.
The overwhelming majority of Gaza’s inhabitants are refugees, expelled from their cities and villages in what’s now the state of Israel by Zionist militias in 1948.
Analysts additionally blame Israel for the failure of the Oslo Accords, signed in 1993 and 1995, between Israel and the PLO – which was consultant of the Palestinian individuals on the time.
The agreements led to the formation of the PA, an interim, five-year governing physique meant to result in an impartial Palestinian state comprising the occupied territory of East Jerusalem, the West Financial institution and the Gaza Strip.
Nevertheless, 30 years into its existence, the PA has didn’t create a state within the face of Israeli occupation, unlawful land grabs and settlements. Hamas took management of Gaza from the PA in 2007.
Whereas there was preliminary assist for the Oslo Accords amongst Palestinians, the failure to succeed in a closing peace settlement by 1999 and the rising settlement tasks notably beneath Netanyahu, left many dissatisfied. In a leaked video in 2010, Netanyahu boasted how he made certain the Oslo Accords didn’t succeed.
The hopes of the Oslo Accords have become despair as Israeli insurance policies beneath successive governments continued to undermine the PA and its aspirations.
As we speak, the PA has restricted administrative rule over pockets of the occupied West Financial institution, whereas Israeli settlements, that are thought-about unlawful beneath worldwide regulation, have grown quickly. The settler inhabitants within the occupied West Financial institution and East Jerusalem has grown from 250,000 Israelis in 1993 to greater than 700,000 this 12 months.
“The Israelis wanted Oslo [Accords] because that’s how they maintain their colonisation; by maintaining the facade of a peace process,” mentioned Baconi.
“Hamas was showing a mirror to the Israelis to say: If you’re actually talking about the possibility of ending the occupation, then end it,” he instructed Al Jazeera.
“That was their offer instead of the [1993] Oslo agreements – that they would stop armed resistance if Israel left Palestinians be in the eastern side of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.”