Hamas and The Palestinian Islamic Jihad
The stated goal of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad is to conquer Israel and replace it with an Islamist state. Both groups reject the Oslo Accords and other plans for peace with Israel. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the two groups worked together to derail the peace process by attacking Israeli civilians. Hamas undertook a ceasefire with Israel in August 2004. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad was unhappy with the ceasefire. In September 2005, Hamas was criticized by Islamic Jihad for calling off rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza.
In 2008, Hamas publicly offered a long-term hudna (truce) with Israel if Israel agreed to return to its 1967 borders and to grant the "right of return" to all Palestinian refugees. In 2010, Ismail Haniyeh announced that Hamas would accept the outcome of a Palestinian referendum on a peace treaty with Israel even if the results were not in line with their ideology. This represented a departure from their earlier insistence that they would not be bound by any such result. In 2012, Mousa Abu Marzook, a high-ranking Hamas official in competition with Haniyeh for Hamas' top leadership post, gave an interview in which he expressed a range of opinions, some of which differed from the organisation's actual stance. He said that Hamas will not recognize Israel and will not feel bound to understand a peace treaty negotiated by Fatah as a recognition of Israel, calling instead for a hudna (temporary truce). Abu Marzook echoed Haniyeh's demand that Palestinians should be given the unconditional right to return into what is now Israel proper.
Read more about this topic: Palestinian Views On The Peace Process
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