Hamas leader Khalil-al-Hayya agrees to dissolve group only if Israel accepts ‘two-state solution’

In an interview with an international media agency, in Istanbul, Khalil-al-Hayya, who hailed the October 7 attack on Israel said that the terror group Hamas will accept a fully sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and return of the Palestinian refugees in accordance with international resolutions along Israel’s pre-1967 borders. And if that is achieved, then the group would dissolve.

“All the experiences of people who fought against occupiers when they have become independent and obtained their rights and states, what have these forces done? They have turned into political parties and their defending fighting forces into the national army,” he said.

However, Hayya did not say whether the acceptance of the two-state solution would bring an end to a conflict between Hamas and Israel or an interim step towards the groups stated objective of destroying Israel. But there is no guarantee whether Israel will be on board of such a plan, especially after it vowed to dismantle the terrorist organisation and its current leadership is adamantly opposed to the creation of Palestinian state on lands captured by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Meanwhile, there has been no immediate reaction from Israel or the Palestinian authority the internationally legalised self-ruled government that Hamas drove out when it seized Gaza in 2007 after winning the Palestinian parliamentary elections. After the takeover of Gaza by Hamas, the Palestinian authority was left with administering semi-autonomous pockets of Israel occupied West Bank.

International media reports that even as Hamas at times softens its public position about the possibility of a Palestinian State alongside Israel, it officially continues to reject any alternative to the full liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea, referring to area from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea including land that now make up Israel.

Israel has said that it has dismantled most of the Hamas initial two dozen battalions since the start of the war, but that four remaining ones are holed up in Rafah. Israel stresses that in order to completely defeat the Palestinian terrorist entity called Hamas, an invasion and attack on Rafah is crucial.

On the Rafah operation, the Al-Hayya said such an offensive would not succeed in destroying Hamas. He said that the communication between the political leadership outside and the military leadership inside Gaza are uninterrupted by the war. “Israeli forces have not destroyed more than 20 percent of Hamas capabilities neither in the field nor in human, he asserted. If they can’t finish Hamas off, then what is the solution? The solution is to go to consensus,” he said.