Ismail Haniyeh Quotes
We promise you that we will not cede a single part of Palestine, we will not cede Jerusalem, we will continue to fight and we will not lay down our arms.
Haniyeh, Ismail. Speech at Hamas Anniversary Rally. 8 Dec. 2012, Gaza City.
”Palestine” to the Arabs of the area meant the territory of the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel itself. They wanted to expel the Jews and or take over the whole area as a single state—Palestine—with an Arab majority. With the Israeli Defense Forces successes under Dayan, this notion of Palestine was “finished”. The notion of a Palestinian State which included the West Bank and Gaza but not Israel was then negotiated and these negotiations were ongoing for years. Minorities of Arabs and Israelis did not want to see a any Palestinian state that did not include Israel proper, and they blocked it whenever they could.
“Oslo” was a peace conference where the Israelis agreed to give the Palestinians more control over West Bank land in exchange for Palestinian renouncing of terrorism and violence. The Palestinian government was either too weak to expel or arrest the terrorists or unwilling to do so. In either case, Israel had a much harder time coping with terrorism which took Israeli lives and sense of security. A similar thing happened when the Israelis withdrew from the West Bank. Many Israelis thereafter did not want to consider allowing the Palestinians to control any more land, making a two state solution virtually untenable.
Ismail Abdel Salam Ahmed Haniyeh is a senior political leader of Hamas and formerly one of two disputed Prime Ministers of the Palestinian National Authority. Haniyeh became prime minister after Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections of 2006. President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed Haniyeh from office on 14 June 2007 at the height of the Fatah–Hamas conflict, but Haniyeh did not acknowledge the decree and continued to exercise prime ministerial authority in the Gaza Strip. In September 2016, reports indicated Haniyeh would replace Khaled Meshaal as Chief of Hamas's Political Bureau. He was elected as Hamas political chief on 6 May 2017.
