Hamas to Consider Halting Attacks if Israel Leaves
Mon Jul 22, 1:12 PM ET
GAZA (Reuters) - The founder of the Palestinian Muslim militant group Hamas said Monday it would consider halting suicide attacks on Israelis if Israel withdrew from West Bank cities and took other measures.
"Basically what I would say to the occupation army is to leave ... the Palestinian cities in all the West Bank that were occupied ...," Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin told reporters in the Gaza Strip ( news - web sites).
"And stop your aggression, demolishing homes. Release prisoners and stop assassinations. Once the occupation and all those measures against our people stop, we are ready to totally study stopping martyrdom operations, in a positive way."
Hamas gunmen and suicide bombers have targeted Israelis both inside Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
Yassin did not clarify whether any reconsidered position on attacks would apply both to Israel and to Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, or be limited geographically.
Hamas opposes Israel's right to exist and has been carrying out suicide bombings since 1993 interim peace accords which it rejected.
The Israeli army reoccupied seven out of eight West Bank cities, areas transferred to Palestinian self-rule under the interim accords, after suicide attacks killed 26 Israelis in Jerusalem in June.
"Leave its occupation of us, leave our people," Yassin said, when asked what Israel had to do for Hamas to halt attacks. "Leave our villages and lands."
Israel says its closures and curfews in the West Bank are needed to stop Palestinian bombers infiltrating its cities.
The military wing of Hamas has claimed responsibility for a series of suicide bombings in the Palestinian uprising. It says it carries out the bombings in retaliation for Israeli killings of militants.
After a month-long Israeli offensive in the West Bank ended in May, the wheelchair-bound Yassin told Reuters that Hamas would launch attacks on Israel as long as its army continued raids into Palestinian-ruled areas and killed civilians.
At least 1,447 Palestinians and 559 Israelis have been killed in the violence which erupted in September 2000 after U.S.-brokered negotiations on Palestinian statehood in the West Bank and Gaza Strip stalled. |
