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Hamas’s deputy politburo chief Mousa Abu Marzook told Jewish daily Forward that Israel and the Palestinians should reach a ceasefire agreement without Hamas recognizing Israel as a state. He stressed that the Islamist movement will not honor any peace treaty with Israel.
In an interview with the US-based Jewish daily, Abu Marzook said, "We will not recognize Israel as a state. It will be like the relationship between Lebanon and Israel or Syria and Israel."
The Hamas official proposed establishing “a relationship between the two states in the historic Palestinian land as a hudna between both sides. It’s better than war and better than the continuous resistance against the occupation. And better than Israel occupying the West Bank and Gaza, making all these difficulties and problems on both sides.”
Abu Marzook also said he distinguishes between Jews living in Israel and Jews in the US. "We don’t have originally something against the Jew as a religion or against the Jew as a human being," he said.
"The problem is that the Israelis kicked out my family. They have occupied my land and injured thousands of Palestinians…. I have to differentiate between the Jew who did this problem to my people and (American) Jews like you, who never did anything bad to my people."
Abu Marzook was deported from the US in the mid 1990s after Hamas was officially entered into the State Department’s terror watch list. He moved to Damascus and has since served as Khaled Mashaal’s deputy.