Hamas Leader Offers Heavily Qualified Truce

A day after his return to Gaza following eight years in Israeli prisons, the spiritual leader of the militant Islamic movement Hamas received a steady stream of well-wishers Tuesday and floated a conditional proposal for a cease-fire with Israel.

While Israeli officials immediately rejected specifics of the heavily qualified offer by Sheik Ahmed Yassin, they welcomed it in principle, noting that the proposal may indicate new openness on the part of Hamas to reach an eventual accommodation with Israel.

“It has a certain significance because it’s coming from Yassin,” said David Bar-Illan, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “And if it indicates a change in position, we welcome it very much.”

But Bar-Illan called the Hamas leader’s conditions--a full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, the dismantling of Jewish settlements and the release of all Palestinian prisoners--”totally unacceptable.”

In comments to reporters in Gaza City, Yassin and other senior Hamas leaders also emphasized that the group, whose suicide bombings have killed scores of Israelis, is not proposing a permanent reconciliation with Israel.

“If Israel redeploys from Gaza and the West Bank completely and hands [the territories] and [East] Jerusalem to the Palestinians and releases the prisoners . . . in such case we will stop the military attacks,” Yassin said. “But it is just a temporary cease-fire.”

Abdel Aziz Rantissi, a Hamas political leader and close aide to Yassin, added that the movement reserves the right to “continue the struggle against Israel to free all Palestinian land,” a reference to present-day Israel.

Israeli and Palestinian officials and political analysts are watching Yassin’s words and actions for signs of what role he will play within Hamas and in the group’s relations with the Palestinian Authority and with Israel. He is expected to reinvigorate Hamas and pose a formidable leadership challenge to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.

Yassin’s comments Tuesday offered little hint of his future role.

“He’s talking about a cease-fire now, but he is not saying Hamas is giving up the armed struggle totally,” said Menachem Klein, a political scientist at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv’s Bar Ilan University.

Ziad abu Amr, a Palestinian legislator and political scientist who is an expert on Hamas, said Yassin was offering something to Israel that he knew would be rejected. “But he is showing that he is willing to talk,” Abu Amr said.

Yassin was freed in a deal worked out between Israel and Jordan’s King Hussein after Israeli intelligence operatives bungled an assassination attempt against another Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal, two weeks ago in Amman, the Jordanian capital. The attack infuriated Hussein, who signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994 and has remained its friendliest Arab ally.

The king persuaded Israel to free Yassin, and then released two Israeli agents captured in the attack in exchange for the immediate release of 20 Palestinian prisoners by Israel. As many as 50 more prisoners are scheduled for release in coming days.

On Tuesday, the ailing Hamas leader received visitors at a sports club near his home in a rundown Gaza City neighborhood. Among his well-wishers was Arafat, who was conspicuously absent from Yassin’s official welcome a day earlier.

In a related development Tuesday, Arafat met in the West Bank town of Ramallah with U.S. special envoy Dennis B. Ross, who is in the region to mark the resumption this week of long-stalled peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Negotiators are meeting in search of progress on unresolved issues from peace deals already signed.

Israeli and Palestinian officials said late Tuesday that Ross is trying to jump-start the talks by bringing Arafat and Netanyahu together for their first meeting since negotiations broke down in March over Israel’s decision to begin construction on a new Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem. The two leaders met early today, a senior Palestinian official said.

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Special correspondent Fayed abu Shammallah contributed to this report from Gaza City.