(Times Of Israel) Senior Hamas official Khaled Mashaal has dismissed the possibility of a two-state solution and said that his terror group’s devastating October 7 assault on Israel proved that liberating Palestine “from the river to the sea” is a realistic idea.
In an interview with Kuwaiti podcaster Ammar Taki last week, Mashaal, a former top leader of the terror group, said that there is “nearly a consensus” among Palestinians that they will not give up their rights to the land stretching “from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea” — that is, the West Bank, Gaza and all of Israel.
Mashaal noted that the slogan is also regularly chanted at rallies by “American students and in European capitals,” and said that the October 7 onslaught has “revived that dream.”
The Hamas bigwig categorically rejected the option of a political settlement with Israel and a two-state solution to the conflict, on the grounds that it would imply recognizing the legitimacy of the State of Israel, an “unacceptable” red line for the terror movement.
He further claimed that while Hamas has agreed to a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in a bid to “establish common ground” in the context of reconciliation dialogue with other Palestinian factions over the years — most notably its historic rival Fatah — it will not relinquish its ambition to liberate the entirety of historic “Palestine,” including the territory of the State of Israel.
War broke out with Hamas’s October 7 onslaught into southern Israel, when terrorists overran military bases, communities and a music festival, killing some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, amid widespread scenes of horrific abuse. The terrorists also took 253 hostages.
Mashaal said in the interview that being in power in Gaza over the past 17 years had provided Hamas with “political and administrative cover” to build its terror infrastructure undisturbed by the PA or Israel, and manufacture weapons, dig tunnels, and train its members.
