In an interview with The Associated Press on April 24, a senior leader within Hamas' Politburo made remarks that were intriguing to some but enraging to others. Khalil al-Hayya stated that Hamas would, in fact, be willing to lay down its arms and become a strictly political group if the Palestinians were able to establish an independent state on the 1967 borders in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, in addition to allowing for the right of return of Palestinian refugees and their descendants. The latter point is a contentious one because Israel will never agree to be flooded with millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants within its territory. However, the former point is significant in that this was the first time the Islamist group explicitly addressed the issue of disarmament and the end of its guerrilla-style militancy against Israel.
This statement comes six months after Hamas initiated a horrendous attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and, in turn, ignited a deadly and destructive war on Gaza that rages on. Israeli officials have insisted that the war would only end with Hamas returning the hostages and surrendering, though no clear parameters have actually been articulated to describe what exactly such a surrender would entail to be acceptable to Israel.
For years, Hamas has given mixed signals on its stance regarding a two-state solution, especially after the group revised its Charter in 2017, giving the impression of a more pragmatic willingness to accept Israel's existence. Recently, however, another senior political leader, Khaled Mashal, made a contradictory statement in which he rejected the two-state solution and signaled an unwillingness to accept Israel's presence in any part of historic Palestine.
Hamas's incoherent and inconsistent political positions and stances are nothing new for the Islamist group, which has regularly had inner conflict between intransigent ideologues and a smaller number of relatively moderate figures who understood the limits of what the Palestinians could ever achieve. This goes back to 30 years ago, during the golden years of the Oslo Peace Process, an imperfect yet viable framework that provided a pathway and opportunity for the Palestinians to obtain an independent state on the 1967 borders. Hamas viciously and relentlessly attacked Yasser Arafat for "giving up" 78 percent of historic Palestine and accepting a state only on the territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Hamas claimed that its armed resistance project would achieve what Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) could not through political negotiations. However, the Islamist group never articulated how its terror attacks, including suicide bombings against Israeli bus stops, restaurants, and wedding halls, would actually reverse Israel's occupation of the Palestinian Territories or could totally defeat an advanced nuclear-armed nation with state-of-the-art armed forces. The only coherent constant in Hamas's strategy is that ongoing chaos and instability would somehow be adequate to perpetuate the conflict until a satisfactory resolution eventually emerges.
The terror group worked tirelessly to undermine any meaningful prospects for stability and coexistence, criminalizing the word peace and making it synonymous with the cowardly and treacherous betrayal of Palestinian rights. The group would initiate attacks against Israeli targets that elicited Israeli strikes, incursions, bombardment, and retaliation against the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its various infrastructure and institutions in the West Bank and Gaza. The late 1990s were immensely promising in that the Palestinian people were able to get their own passports, ID cards, gradual self-governance, and infrastructure projects, including an airport (that I flew into twice) and an impending seaport.
All those gains and clear and indisputable benefits from negotiating with Israel to implement a two-state solution on the 1967 borders were attacked and ridiculed by Hamas. Growing up in Gaza, I remember vividly the group's propaganda dismissing the entirety of the PLO's efforts to obtain an independent Palestinian state because Hamas wanted an Islamic state encompassing all of the land. Even as many in the Palestinian Territories were filled with hope that a reasonable compromise is better than perpetual conflict, Hamas maintained a maximalist position with entirely illogical demands that it knew would never be fulfilled.
Even when the group participated in the 2006 parliamentary elections that were built upon a two-state-solution-centric political framework, Hamas refused to accept the 1967 borders, disarmament, and the renunciation of violence and wanted to sabotage the PA, ultimately preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state. This resulted in the eventual split between a Hamas-controlled Gaza and a PA-run West Bank.
Worse, and since 2007, Hamas turned the Gaza Strip into a "resistance" citadel from which all sorts of attacks were initiated against Israeli territory, squandering the opportunity to use the 2005 withdrawal of Israeli settlements to turn Gaza into an effective role model for prosperous Palestinian governance that could be replicated in an occupation and settlement-free West Bank.
After multiple deadly wars and 17 years in which tens of thousands have lost their lives, and Gaza has been destroyed several times over, Hamas is now realizing the futility of its raison d'être. It is facing a tactical and operational defeat, proving its deadly foolishness and lack of viable pathways to achieve Palestinian statehood.
This begs several questions: what was the last 30 years wasted for? Why did Hamas condemn and sabotage the Oslo Peace Process with its suicide bombings and refusal to engage in a political process? What has the group achieved through its violent means that could not have been obtained 30 years ago? Why launch the Oct. 7 attack, resulting in the needless deaths of thousands of Palestinians and Israelis, when Hamas could have announced its willingness to accept a two-state solution on the 1967 borders? What has Hamas's alliance with the Iranian-led "Axis of Resistance" provided the Palestinian people in Gaza other than political stagnation and endless conflict in which Gazans are used as pawns?
As a Palestinian who grew up in Gaza and witnessed Hamas's rise to power up close, I cannot help but be enraged by al-Hayya's statement. This is especially so given how many family members I have lost in this war and how the entirety of my immediate and extended family is homeless, with nowhere to go back to, throughout Gaza. They are living under the constant threat of losing their lives due to Hamas's refusal to release the hostages and end the war.
The group that has become celebrated and normalized by some ill-informed college students and elements of the pro-Palestine movement is so clearly facing an existential crisis that it's willing to accept what was deemed treacherous just a few years ago. This is a sad and recurring theme in the Palestinian national project whereby pragmatic ideas, approaches, and solutions were dismissed, only for Palestinian leaders to now demand the very solutions that they once rejected.
Nevertheless, it is essential to seize any opportunities amidst the chronic hopelessness and impasse of the Israel and Palestine conflict. Despite its manipulative and insincere posturing, Hamas should be engaged to get the group started on the thousand-mile journey to renounce violence and accept Israel's existence and the inevitability of its continued existence. Due to its operational weakness in Gaza and dwindling political prospects if ejected from Qatar, Hamas may now be willing to engage in ideas and proposals it would have otherwise not been open to.
It is ironic that as Hamas itself recognizes the futility of armed resistance and the inevitable need for compromise and concession to obtain Palestinian rights and self-determination, some pro-Palestine activists and advocates are doubling down on the maximalist "resistance" narrative that sees no space for an Israel living side by side with a Palestinian state.
It is painful and distressing to look at the past 30 years of Hamas's destructive and deadly actions that sabotaged hopes for Palestinian independence and peace with Israel, only for the group to come around this late. I hope that the pro-Palestine movement, especially among young college students, can take a cue and not waste decades on "feel-good" and maximalist activism and instead leverage their Western privilege to actually achieve something worthwhile for the Palestinian people.
After 75 years of displacement, occupation, oppression, and missed opportunities, it's time for level heads to prevail and for a rational rebranding of coexistence and peace with Israel as a necessary evolution to ensure the survival of the Palestinian people on what remains of their land. As difficult as it might be for some to hear, there will be no full right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants inside Israel itself. Instead, once a Palestinian state is established in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, both territories should be fully open to any and all who wish to return to this new Palestinian state.
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib is a Middle East writer and analyst from Gaza and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
