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[quote=Anonymous]Israel rejected peace with Hamas on at least five occasions.

-On June 1, 1988, two months before Hamas adopted its infamous 1988 charter that called for Israel’s destruction, Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar submitted a peace proposal to Yitzhak Rabin, the then-Israeli Minister of Defense. If Israel wanted peace, it had to withdraw from the Occupied Territories, release Palestinian detainees, restore Palestinian rights, and allow Palestinians to name their own representatives. Hamas’s founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, similarly agreed to negotiate with Israel if it first acknowledged the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and the right of return to their land.

-Hamas stayed out of politics during the Oslo Process, a series of political agreements between Israel and the PLO that gradually transferred a degree of Palestinian autonomy within the Occupied Palestinian Territories to the newly established Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Palestinian National Council (PNC). During the 1990s, Hamas refused to recognize the legitimacy of negotiations with Israel and thus took no part in Palestinian elections. But, by 2006, Hamas leaders decided they could have a greater impact from within the system than without, and the group participated in the January 2006 PNC elections. To everyone’s surprise, they won.

In March 2006, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh put out a peace overture and wrote:

“We in Hamas are for peace and want to put an end to bloodshed. We have been observing a unilateral truce for more than a year without reciprocity from the Israeli side. The message from Hamas and the Palestinian Authority to the world powers is this: talk to us no more about recognising Israel’s ‘right to exist’ or ending resistance until you obtain a commitment from the Israelis to withdraw from our land and recognise our rights.”

He added, “Peaceful means will do if the world is willing to engage in a constructive and fair process in which we and the Israelis are treated as equals.”

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