Ignoring Meshaal is a mistake, especially given developments I’ll describe in a moment. So I asked a Palestinian journalist to translate some key excerpts of the Al-Ayyam interview. They appear below. Pay particular attention to the last paragraph. First, though a bit of context. (For more context, see my new American Prospect piece.)

In the interview, Meshaal reiterates his commitment to the Palestinian unity agreements of 2006, which were the basis for the short-lived unity Hamas-Fatah unity government last year. On the face of it, he’s suggesting willingness to return to a unity framework. Under the 2006 agreements, Hamas agreed to let Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas negotiate with Israel on a final-status agreement based on the June 4, 1967 lines, Palestinian sovereignty in East Jerusalem, and the right of return. Meshaal is saying he still stands by that, though he’s not willing to recognize Israel formally. In the final paragraph of the excerpt below, the interviewer is essentially asking Meshaal if he isn’t still committed to the Hamas Charter of 1988, which leaves no room for Israel. Meshaal’s answer is: In my heart, of course I believe all of Palestine belongs to the Palestinians. But practically speaking, our political position is a de facto two-state solution.

Let me be clear: Meshaal is still stating a considerably more hardline position than that of Fatah. This isn’t an offer on which any Israeli leader could just sign. Meshaal’s stated conditions for two states falls far short of the Clinton parameters or the Geneva accords. On the other hand, pay attention: The leader of Hamas is saying that the Charter has no practical relevance. He really wishes Israel would vanish, but that’s not his political program. He’d rather take a couple pills against nausea, and accept reality.

I will also stress that I’m not ignoring Hamas’s long record of terror. My mental map of Jerusalem is marked with the places where Hamas blew people up, including the places where I’ve heard the blast and the screaming and seen the blood. These are nasty people. The question, given the current stalemate, is whether it is in Israeli – or American, or moderate Palestinian – interests to continue with the policy of isolating Hamas, or to prefer a Palestinian unity government in which Hamas would have a stake in compromises.

To this I add three more bits of context:

• The recent Vanity Fair investigation fills out an earlier International Institute for Strategic Studies study on the Bush administration’s bid to overturn the 2006 Palestinian elections by force – a plan that backfired and led to the Hamas takeover of Gaza.
• The report issued today by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, a research institute with ties to the military, details the Hamas military build-up in Gaza. I don’t have reason to question the report’s facts (except that all info from intelligence sources is by nature suspect). But one must still ask the question that Judith Miller forgot: What’s the political agenda behind releasing the material? At first glance, it’s to dissuade the government from accepting a ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza. An opposite conclusion is also possible: The policy of siege and isolation of Hamas since the 2006 elections has been a catastrophic failure.
• Jimmy Carter is going to Damascus next week, and may meet Meshaal. One can condemn this reflexively as, say, Marty Peretz predictably does. (The man that Peretz calls the “worst president in American history” produced the Israel-Egyptian peace accord, perhaps the most significant contribution to Israeli security since 1948.) I’d suggest that the US and Israel use Carter’s services to check the possibility of a Palestinian unity government as a way out of the current stalemate.

Here are the excerpts from the Meshaal interview:

Al-Ayyam April 2, 2008

http://www.al-ayyam.com/znews/site/pdfs/2-4-2008/p13.pdf

Meshaal to Al-Ayyam: Tough Israeli Positions Responsible for Hindering Tahdi’a And Exchange Deal

DAMASCUS – Hamas Political Bureau Chief Khaled Meshaal stressed his movement’s consent in principle to a full sovereign Palestinian state on 1967 borders. He denied claims about open or secret talks with Israel and rejected totally the principle of direct contacts with the Israelis…

Meshaal described attempts of Israelis to open channels [to Hamas] through Europeans as a trap…

Meshaal added that Israel knows what it is needed to do. It knows that it needs to end its illegal occupation and to recognize the Palestinian rights…

To those [Israelis] who support dialogue, Meshaal said that their entry to this is to pressure their leadership to stop the aggression, stop its occupation and recognize the Palestinian rights, especially in the light of the Palestinian and Arab consensus on a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders…

Meshaal stated that the talks with Egypt on the tahdi’a – lull or calm – between Hamas and Israel had not yet led to any result till now. To clarify, he said there are two meanings for the tahdi’a: A [short-term] tahdi’a, and a hudna, truce, as suggested by Hamas, which would be discussed or negotiated when the conditions ripen for Israeli withdrawal to June 4, 1967 lines and recognition of the Palestinian rights in Jerusalem and sovereignty and the right of return, and in that case we would be talking about [a truce lasting] years…

Meshaal reiterated his commitment to the Prisoner’s Document, which emphasizes the main lines of the unchanging Palestinian positions, saying: We have the Palestinian Conciliation Document of 2006, in which all the organizations agreed clearly to a state based on the borders of 1967 including Jerusalem, the right of return and full sovereignty. This is the Palestinian position and it is the Arab Position too with some reservations [on our part]. The Israelis should declare their full and strict commitment to it…

As for the claims that Hamas seeks to eradicate Israel, Meshaal said: “We are committed to the political platform on which we agreed with the other Palestinian forces and in convergence with Arab position. Thus all the international parties should deal with this political fact and judge the political platform to which we agreed. The challenge here is not to search in the minds of peoples but [look at] the offered political platform on the table and the American administration and the international community should work to get Israel to be committed to it … This is the way out. After that, whoever wants to recognize Israel or not, that would a matter of his personal convictions.”

Related Posts:

Excuse Me, Ariel isn’t in Israel

A radical idea becomes conventional

First Law of Political Thermodynamics: For every action there is an unequal and opposite reaction

Update: The link originally given for the Arabic text was for the beginning of the article. The full text is here.