GAZA CITY, 10 January 2004 — The spiritual leader of the Hamas resistance group said yesterday his organization would weigh a “temporary peace” with Israel if a Palestinian state was created in all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But Sheikh Ahmed Yassin told Reuters: “We believe the Israeli enemy does not want peace but wants only to have control of the area.”
“If Israel wants peace, we are ready to give a truce for a certain period of time with condition, so as to remove the occupation and give our people their freedom and their independence on their land,” he said.
Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Israeli Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, told Israel Radio that Yassin’s proposal was “definitely interesting”. But he said: “It is far from being a real change. In the meantime, it’s a tactical declaration.”
Hamas has killed dozens of Israelis in bombings since a Palestinian uprising began in September 2000. Hamas says its attacks are in response to Israeli strikes against Palestinians.
Yassin said Hamas had been in contact with the United States, “through mediators, journalists and visiting (foreign) delegations, aimed at improving relations” with Washington, but the efforts brought no breakthrough.
He described any truce with Israel as a “temporary peace”, saying a cessation of violence must be accompanied by the creation of a “fully sovereign Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank, on the 1967 borders without occupation”.
Israel seized the two areas in the 1967 Middle East war and has rejected a complete pullback to the boundary lines that marked the Jewish state’s before that conflict.
Yassin said any temporary peace, which he first proposed seven years ago on his release from an Israeli jail, would not entail Hamas recognition of Israel. The wheelchair-bound religious scholar rejected media reports of a de facto cease-fire already in place between Israel and Hamas.
He said Hamas’ military wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, “are not restrained and have a free hand to do what they can to strike the enemy”.
Asked about so far unsuccessful efforts by Egypt to broker a truce, Yassin said: “There are no contacts. Everything is stopped.”
A cease-fire would be key to the success of a violence-stalled US-backed peace plan known as the “road map”.
A truce declared by Palestinian militant factions in June collapsed two months later amid violence.
Meanwhile, in another development, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon responded to growing calls for resuming peace talks with Syria by insisting Damascus stop supporting armed militant groups, sources in his office said yesterday.
“We want peace ... but the Syrians must stop supporting terror, end aid to Hezbollah and close down the headquarters of the terrorist organizations in Damascus,” he told a US congressional delegation on Thursday. Syria shelters several Palestinian organizations and Israel accuses Damascus of abetting anti-Israeli attacks.
Sharon reiterated his view that fresh negotiations with Syria could not resume where they broke off four years ago, when Israel had agreed to a withdrawal from most of the Golan Heights it occupied in 1967 and annexed 14 years later.
Sharon has come under renewed pressure from senior members of his Cabinet to reopen the Syrian chapter and accept offers by Damascus to resume peace talks. But a poll carried by the Israeli daily Ma’ariv yesterday showed that a majority of Israelis opposed handing back the strategic Golan plateau to Syria.
To the question “Are you for or against handing over the Golan to Syria in exchange for peace?”, 56 percent of respondents answered “no,” while 36 percent supported the idea and eight percent did not express an opinion.
The Ma’ariv poll also revealed that the Israeli premier’s popularity was on the rise since he announced his “disengagement” plan, which consists of unilateral measures Israel might take should the existing peace track with the Palestinians fail to bear fruit.
