Hamas official says group would lay down its arms if an independent Palestinian state is established

That will never happen while Netanyahu and his regime are in power. And the only time steps were taken in that direction, the Israeli Prime Minister got assassinated.

Assassinated by hard line Israelis who refuse to accept any type of two states solution. I have always wondered if we would have seen a true two state solution if Yitzhak Rabin hadn't been shot. I think it probably would have happened.
- After reading his biography I fully believe that he could have created Middle East peace he could have been so fucking great he was a good man
nor will the Hamas remain peaceful...
- Considering they're the only ones offering to lay down arms, I'd say they're more likely to be peaceful than the IDF and Netanyahu, who are not making such an offer.
I think Clinton may have been the last individual human that could have prevented catastrophe in Gaza. He should have capitilised on it and essentially refused to take no as an answer from Israel. Instead, he just kind of went "oh well", and here we are.

Lmao, fuck this guy. He doesn't give two fucks about Palestine or its people.

The fact that a large number of people in the West are denying this and portraying Hamas as freedom fighters is very worrying.
- Well then who is Israel attacking? If Hamas is in Qatar?

I would personally reject this deal.

The Palestinian people do not deserve to live under the rule of Hamas. In 19 years of living under Hamas, after all the money given to them by the US, France, the UK, Qatar, Iran, and even Israel, the only thing they built for the Palestinian people has been tunnels to commit terrorism from.

I would personally reject this deal.
The Palestinian people do not deserve to live under the rule of Hamas.
Instead, they deserve to live under the genocidal tyranny of Israel. Clearly that's the much better choice.
- Why do all of you message me specifically to use the same dishonest bad faith debate tactics?
They also do not deserve to live under an Israeli genocide.
- I mean yeah, but why can't we have a two state solution that gets rid of Hamas as a governing authority and also stops genocide?
The Israeli imposed closure on Gaza began in 1991, temporarily, becoming permanent in 1993. The barrier began around Gaza around 1972. After the 'disengagement' in 2007, this turned into a full blockade; where Israel has had control over the airspace, borders, and sea. Under the guise of 'dual-use' Israel has restricted food, allocating a minimum supply leading to over half of Gaza being food insecure; construction materials, medical supplies, and other basic necessities have also been restricted. This has been a deliberate tactic of De-development.
Gaza Policy Forum summary: Experts agree that Israel’s dual-use policy causes acute distress
Through 1993 Israel imposed a one-way system of tariffs and duties on the importation of goods through its borders; leaving Israel for Gaza, however, no tariffs or other regulations applied. Thus, for Israeli exports to Gaza, the Strip was treated as part of Israel; but for Gazan exports to Israel, the Strip was treated as a foreign entity subject to various “non-tariff barriers.” This placed Israel at a distinct advantage for trading and limited Gaza’s access to Israeli and foreign markets. Gazans had no recourse against such policies, being totally unable to protect themselves with tariffs or exchange rate controls. Thus, they had to pay more for highly protected Israeli products than they would if they had some control over their own economy. Such policies deprived the occupied territories of significant customs revenue, estimated at $118-$176 million in 1986. (Arguably, the economic terms of the Gaza—Jericho Agreement modify the situation only slightly.)
page 240
In a report released in May 2015, the World Bank revealed that as a result of Israel’s blockade and OPE, Gaza’s manufacturing sector shrank by as much as 60 percent over eight years while real per capita income is 31 percent lower than it was 20 years ago. The report also stated that the blockade alone is responsible for a 50 percent decrease in Gaza’s GDP since 2007. Furthermore, OPE (com- bined with the tunnel closure) exacerbated an already grave situation by reducing Gaza’s economy by an additional $460 million.
Page 402
The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-Development - Third Edition by Sara M. Roy
- What specifically in this wall of text is a direct response to what I said?
After Ireland gained independence they fought a civil war. Same in countless outer places. The Greeks fought one while fighting for independence. I fully expect the Palestinians to do the same.
The thing is: the Israelis don't get to decide any of this. That what independence from Israel means.
It said a free Palestinian State not Hamas rules
The Palestinian people do not deserve to live under the rule of Hamas. In 19 years of living under Hamas, after all the money given to them by the US, France, the UK, Qatar, Iran, and even Israel, the only thing they built for the Palestinian people has been tunnels to commit terrorism
An independent Palestinian state would give the Palestinian people a chance to throw off the yoke of Hamas.
- I don't believe that. Right wing fuckheads with weapons don't generally give up their power, especially after they had already taken away the right to vote.
  A lot of dead Palestinians will be on your hands if you are wrong here. The price of being wrong is too high for me to agree with you, though I wish I could.
You mean to fight the occupation?
- ...can you be more clear about what your comment means in reference to what I said?
Probably, but they don't deserve to live under Israel either, and one of those is much more effective at killing them all.
Two state solution has to be the way to go, after that the people can have a Palestinian Spring if they want and overthrow Hamas, but whoever comes after is likely not going to be much better. They never are.
Ahh yes. Reject the deal, continue the starvation and murder of thousands and thousands of Palestinians by Israel. Because what would be more liberating than being murdered?
I see statements like "Free Gaza from Hamas" to justify the continued genocide. It is no suprise, given that the Nazis wrote "Arbeit macht frei". "Work makes free",
Twisting genocide into claiming it to be a liberation of the people they are genociding. Now i am not sure, if you belong to these bad faith people, but if you wonder, why you are getting backlash, it is because your statement seems to be advocating for that.
- Why do you automatically assume somebody who is anti-Hamas is pro-war?
  Probably so you have an excuse to call people Nazis.
  I won't be engaging with that nonsense. You can message again with an intent of more respectful dialog or you can be blocked.
The Palestinian people do not deserve to live under the rule of Hamas
Depends. Does conversion to a political party imply free elections and opposition parties to exist?
- No, obviously Hamas would not take a deal that is conditional upon [the UN?] removing them from power and holding elections.
- Which terror groups that took full power restored the right to vote after having already stripped their people of that right?
I agree…but one thing at a time. When Palestine is free, then they can get rid of Hamas. But right now, they’re on the same team against Israel…against literal genocide. A violently oppressive fundamentalist government is obviously something to shed when you have a state to expel them from. But they’re living under the worst case scenario right now. Hamas is their only defense at the moment against genocidal colonialist state. Fighting a battle on two fronts is a recipe for complete destruction.

Before people go off about them being evil, how much worse would it be if you tried? If it fails you're just back in the same place. If it works then you have peace.

Before people go off about them being evil, how much worse would it be if you tried? If it fails you’re just back in the same place.
Alright, while on a moral level this offer would be definitely the right thing to accept (ASSUMING complete good faith), it could be much, MUCH worse. Hamas has shown a willingness and ability to commit to large-scale attacks on Israel - considering the long, long history of antisemitic and genocidal rhetoric Hamas officials have engaged in, "Five years of not disrupting an enemy's plans and organization" is a five-year recipe for an even-better coordinated and funded attack.
- Follow the North Ireland model independent verification of compliance (on both sides).
- The Hamas guy in the OP is literally talking about how they would lay down arms and become a party. IRA to Sinn Fein.
  (Will there be splinter hardliners? Sure! There is a civil war at the end of Independence. But there is a promise of peace after the civil war.)
- hamas can't commit large-scale attacks on israel... Nobody can... Does anybody remember the iron fucking Dome that they have? Nobody is attacking Israel it's retarded to think that they are.
Peace means Israelis can't steal land from people their government murdered.
Peace doesn't sell arms (weapons)

If you consider that Hamas only exists to fight against Israeli oppression over an ineffective PA, it makes sense that if the oppression ends, Hamas becomes irrelevant.

It's important to note that for most of its existence, "fighting against Israeli oppression" explicitly meant Israel no longer existing. This is the first time I can remember them even implying that they would accept a two state solution.
- they accepted a two-state solution previously, the isreali PM that was negotiating with them at the time was assassinated.
- Before 1948, Palestinian Leadership repeatedly advocated for a Unitary Binational State for decades: Palestinian Arab Congress advocating for Unified State 1928, Arab Higher Committee advocating for Unified State 1937, Arab League advocating for Unified State 1948
  After the founding of Israel, the Two-State Solutions were utilized to further annex the Palestinian Occupied Territories and enact military control over Palestinians while denying them human and civil rights. This is apartheid. Despite this, both Fatah and Hamas have accepted a Two-State Solution on the 1967 borders, with the two most important factors being the Right of Return of Palestinian refugees and an end to the permanent occupation.
  Oslo Accord Sources: MEE, NYT, Haaretz, AJ
  History of peace process - The Intercept
  The settlements represent land-grabbing, and land-grabbing and peace-making don’t go together, it is one or the other. By its actions, if not always in its rhetoric, Israel has opted for land-grabbing and as we speak Israel is expanding settlements. So, Israel has been systematically destroying the basis for a viable Palestinian state and this is the declared objective of the Likud and Netanyahu who used to pretend to accept a two-state solution. In the lead up to the last election, he said there will be no Palestinian state on his watch. The expansion of settlements and the wall mean that there cannot be a viable Palestinian state with territorial contiguity. The most that the Palestinians can hope for is Bantustans, a series of enclaves surrounded by Israeli settlements and Israeli military bases.
  Avi Shlaim
  How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution
  ‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe
  One State Solution, Foreign Affairs
- Well, they did fuck around and find out. Now they are facing an existential threat of their own and suddenly reasonable?
- They said they would accept 1967 borders in their 2017 charter, so it's been done before. It was also less antisemitic than their previous charter. I think they're trying to be less extreme and more flexible to get more recruitment maybe, but that's just my guess.
- They've publicly held this position for nearly 20 years now. When they publicly adopted it and got elected as the new Palestinian Authority because of it, Israel immediately declared war and prevented them taking power.
That's a chicken and egg problem, though, isn't it: Netanyahu's government wants Hamas because the conflict keeps Bibi out of prison, and Hamas wants to remain relevant. All the same, the Israeli and Palestinian people are the ones who suffer due to both regimes being in power, and Hamas doesn't shed its guilt just because Israel doesn't want a reasonable Palestinian government. Neither side wants to blink because they have multi-generational hatred for the other side, and that means popular support for further violence probably isn't going anywhere. You back down! No, you back down!
The result is that neither side is going to take real steps to deescalate, because both sides benefit from the conflict. That the Palestinians are suffering more, by orders of magnitude, doesn't make either side's position any less entrenched: Bibi wants to stay in power (and free), and Hamas wants to remain relevant and in power, and they're more justified now than ever. Both regimes need to be replaced.
The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: ‘The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’
-Article 7 of Hamas’ founding charter
They were founded to kill Jews and push them out of Palestine. They’re not righteous freedom fighters.
“Oh Allah, destroy the Jews and their supporters. Oh Allah, destroy the Americans and their supporters. Oh Allah, count them one by one, and kill them all, without leaving a single one.”
-prayer of Sheik Ahmad Bahr
They’re just as genocidal as Israel has been as of late, they just lack the same capability Israel does.
- Hamas began twenty years into the occupation during the first Intifada, with the goal of ending the occupation. Collective punishment has been a deliberate Israeli tactic for decades with the Dahiya doctrine. Violence such as suicide bombings and rockets escalated in response to Israeli enforcement of the occupation and apartheid.
  Hamas 1988 Charter and Revised 2017 Charter
  The 1988 Charter, which is certainly unreasonable in its fundamentalism with Sharia Law and is antisemitic, does not call for the extermination of all Jewish People. Hamas wants an end to Israel as an Apartheid State, not an extermination of all Israelis. Under Ahmed Yassin in the 1990's, truces were offered in exchange for Israeli to withdrawal from Gaza and the West Bank to the 1967 borders. The 2017 Revised charter explicitly accepts a Two-State Solution of the 1967 Borders. Check Article 7 and 13 of the 1988 Charter to see yourself, compare it to Article 20 and 24-26 in the revised charter.
  The slogan From the River to the Sea is about Palestinian liberation that started in the 60s by the PLO for a democratic secular state, not Genocide. The Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad in 1966 maybe, but he's not Palestinian.
  History of Hamas supported by Netanyahu since 2012
  No I don't support Hamas as a ruling party, I want Palestinians to be able to have free fair elections.
- I think that person you're replying to's point is they won't be able to recruit at the same right without the huge group of angry, oppressed people that Israel keeps producing. They'll wither away out off non-relevance.
Hamas has lied about peace and democracy in the past. They became the state of Palestine by winning an election in which they promised to stop attacks on civilians and be democratic, then refusing to hold an election for 2 decades.
Israel is a genocidal regime and needs to be stopped. But that doesn't make Hamas the good guys. A long-term solution can't include the current governments of either Israel or Palestine.
- Hamas won an election in 2007, which no other country accepted the results of. Israel responded with a blockade. Not saying they're the good guys but it's not like it's a level playing field.
HAMAS exists to exterminate Isreal and its inhabitants. Their offer is 'free Palestine, let us be the dominant political party, and let us form and official national army, then we chill for 5 years! Don't worry what we might do after that!'
Hamas isn't going to just die out if they win. Isreal would be suicidal if they agreed to the 'deal'.
- Hamas ran in the 2006 election under a completely different name, in an effort to demonstrate that they can in fact separate themselves from their militant faction.
  Remember, Israel also had its origins in armed struggle (against the British).
  Edit: although this is probably Israeli projection, given that the armed factions did become the Israeli military. And we all know what they're up to.
- Oke, and Israel exists to exterminate Palestinians and other arabs in their holy quest for greater Israel. Why is Israel continuing to settle the West Bank if Hamas is the big bad?

Gotta love the wording in this article "Hamas, which is committed to the destruction of Israel..."

It's because the "state" of Israel is inseparable from a military blockade that imposes a starvation regime and illegally settles lands in the West Bank in direct defiance of the UN. It's like saying I'm committed to the destruction of the US because I'm committed to ending criminal wars of aggression, unconstitutional mass surveillance, and a prison system with 2 million residents.

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews."
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp
- Made up tripe should be treated as such, and people who believe in any kind of religious doctrine are delusion and deranged. We shouldn’t trust religious people with positions of authority or power, look at where this has gotten humanity.

“Best we can do is value menu holocaust.”

Even that they are failing hard at. Despite all the unimaginable cruelty and choicest Western weaponry, all they have succeeded in is causing utter destruction and wholesale slaughter; they have neither decisively defeated Hamas or broken the resolve of a people they have blockaded more or less since 1967. What a bunch of losers.

Two issues. The first is that they aren't going to get pre-1967 borders. The larger more important point though is that Hamas just admitted they aren't a legitimate government power and are actually terrorists instead. Own goal.

Terrorism is a verb.
Terrorists are people that commit terrorism.
Official count is now 42,000 dead Palestinians, but that is because the ability to count the dead no longer exists. The number is probably closer to 100,000
Israeli doctors have come forward to detail how amputations are regular for Palestinian prisoners who have been zip tied for months now.
Any definition of terrorism that includes Hamas, also includes the Israeli government.
Edit: recognizing your username, now is when you'll call me antisemitic.
- The number is probably closer to 100,000
  Based on what exactly?
- You're at the very least anti-partsofspeech.
What's the difference between terrorists and the resistance to an occupation?
- I suspect you are not asking in good faith, but I'm answering anyway: Methods and goals. Hamas methods are clear: Legitimate resistance doesn't deliberately and as a core policy murder, abduct and rape civilians. Hamas are no different from IS in this regard, which nobody calls resistance or freedom fighters.
  Goals: Hamas actual and openly stated goal is the creation of a global Islamic caliphate and the murder and/or enslavement of all "nonbelievers", not the liberation of the Palestinian people.
- The distinction comes from the ends they seek and the means they go about achieving those ends.
  Oh Allah, destroy the Jews and their supporters. Oh Allah, destroy the Americans and their supporters. Oh Allah, count them one by one, and kill them all, without leaving a single one.”
  -prayer of Sheik Ahmad Bahr
  I could easily get behind a platform that acknowledges that 7 million Jews now live in Israel and forcing them out (or even worse, killing them) would be a humanitarian catastrophe, but instead Hamas’ position is just as unyielding and genocidal as what Bibi’s admin has been waging upon the people of Gaza and the West Bank. They’re only now talking about laying down their arms because it benefits their attempts to paint themselves as the reasonable party in this conflict which I find to be a farce. More conflict and death benefits both Likud and Hamas.
A political organisation can have an armed wing but whatever.
Israel is a terrorist state

The charter of Likud says

Between the sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.

so let's see if Israel chooses security or expansion this time. Every other time they have chosen expansion and a Greater Israel, but hopefully they choose peace this time.

sounds reasonable but on the other hand I wouldn't trust that terrorist dipshit a second. The Hamas does not care about Palestine or it's people...

So what's the downside? If they break their promise you just end up in the same place you're already in. Are you afraid there might actually be peace?

Can indepent mean independent from Hamas (which was basically crafted by Israel)?

According to the definitions of the words yes it can

I don't think they would, but I certainly support testing this claim.

Pre-1948 borders are the real solution for the Palestinians to have their own place. I support pre-1948 borders versus everything we are seeing today. People are behaving exactly like the people they feared and despised the most. It's weird, but so are they.

Pre-1948 as in going back to the borders of the one state Mandatory Palestine? Any solution that entails the destruction of the state of Israel is dead in the water for the international community.
What the official is proposing here (two states) would be about the only way to peace.
- I would be happy with Palestinians having equality

dude LET'S GO

Pre 1967 borders.
Youd have better odds of me shitting out a herd of albino rabid kittens than Israel ever agreeing to those terms.
- sounds good

Update: it was rejected.

Again.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Al-Hayya, a high-ranking Hamas official who has represented the Palestinian militants in negotiations for a cease-fire and hostage exchange, struck a sometimes defiant and other times conciliatory tone.

Speaking to the AP in Istanbul, Al-Hayya said Hamas wants to join the Palestine Liberation Organization, headed by the rival Fatah faction, to form a unified government for Gaza and the West Bank.

The Palestinian Authority hopes to establish an independent state in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza — areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war.

Al-Hayya denied a permanent move of the group’s main political office is in the works and said Hamas wants to see Qatar continue in its capacity as mediator in the talks.

Al-Hayya also implicitly threatened that Hamas would attack Israeli or other forces who might be stationed around a floating pier the U.S. is scrambling to build along Gaza’s coastline to deliver aid by sea.

He denied that Hamas militants had targeted civilians during the attacks — despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary — and said the operation succeeded in its goal of bringing the Palestinian issue back to the world’s attention.

The original article contains 1,167 words, the summary contains 190 words. Saved 84%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

They've been saying that for decades but nobody else is interested.

Returning to the 1967 borders is a nonstarter. Israel has stolen a LOT of land since then so it would mean evicting entire Israeli settlements. Not that I disagree with doing that, but Israel would never agree to it. It would be like the US giving good land back to the native Americans; it's simply never going to happen.