Senior Hamas official hints at recognition of Israel to end the war

Mousa Abu Marzouk’s statement to Al-Monitor was in context of his group uniting with the Palestinian Authority and “respect its commitments.”

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A senior Hamas official told Al-Monitor Monday that the terrorist organization could recognize Israel as a way to end the ongoing war between the two, set off after Hamas invaded Israel on October 7 and massacred 1,200 people, including the elderly and infants.

Mousa Abu Marzouk, the deputy leader of the Hamas political bureau, spoke solely within the context of rejoining the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which turned into the Palestinian Authority (PA) after the 1995 Oslo Accords.

He told the Washington, D.C.-based Arabic news site, “We seek to be part of the PLO and respect its commitments…. You must follow the official position. The official position is that the Palestine Liberation Organization has recognized the State of Israel.”

Hamas and the PA have held reconciliation talks on and off for years, mostly under Egyptian aegis, but even after agreements were made they never came to fruition.

The extremist Islamic Iranian proxy had rejected the PLO’s supposed recognition in 1993 of Israel’s right to exist, which paved the way for the PA’s establishment.

The PA’s legislature never ratified the recognition, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said several times since the current war began that the only difference between Hamas and the PA is that while Hamas only talks of the military option to destroy Israel, the PA is trying to do so using the “salami approach,” taking first what “slices” Israel voluntarily gives up.

Abu Marzouk spoke from Doha, Qatar, as he is part of the Hamas leadership that lives abroad, removed from hardships of the Palestinians in a Gaza under siege as the IDF seeks to destroy the terrorist group so it can never threaten Israel again.

It is unclear if Hamas heads in Gaza, including their chief, Yahya Sinwar, had prior knowledge of Abu Marzouk’s weakening of the rejectionists line, let alone agreed with it.

Two days after the interview, Hamas political head Ismail Haniyeh, who also lives in Doha, announced that the group was “open” to discussing any initiatives that lead to stopping the war, without “excluding the Palestinian resistance from any future arrangements.”

Abu Marzouk is the official who told the BBC in an interview last month that Hamas did not kill civilians, children or the elderly in Israel on the day its men invaded over 20 Gaza envelope communities and a dance rave. This, despite the massive amount of evidence to the contrary that Israel had already gathered of hundreds such deaths, including footage from GoPro cameras worn by the terrorists themselves as they attacked, and clips that they uploaded to the internet immediately afterward.