Official: Yassin Offered Israel A Truce

The Guardian (UK) ^ | 3-24-2004 | Mark Lavie

[blam]

Official: Yassin Offered Israel a Truce

Wednesday March 24, 2004 12:46 AM

By MARK LAVIE

Associated Press Writer

JERUSALEM (AP) - Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin, assassinated in an Israeli air strike, offered Israel a 30-year truce in 1997, the mediator who arranged Yassin's release from prison said Tuesday.

Efraim Halevy, a former Mossad operative who was called in to resolve an Israel-Jordan crisis after a botched assassination attempt against a Hamas leader in Jordan in 1997, made the disclosure in an interview on Israel TV.

Halevy was a confidant of Jordan's King Hussein, and he suggested releasing Yassin from Israeli prison as the price for freedom for six Mossad agents captured in the abortive attempt to kill Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal. Yassin was imprisoned in 1989.

Halevy, who later served as Mossad chief and is now a private citizen, said that just before the Mashaal affair, ``Yassin brought up the idea of a cease-fire of 30 years between Israel and the Palestinians.''

Aides to the Israeli prime minister at the time dismissed Halevy's disclosure as meaningless.

In the TV interview, Halevy did not state Yassin's conditions for such a long-term truce. Yassin, who was killed Monday in an Israeli air strike, often said that Israel would wither away by 2024.

In an interview with The Associated Press shortly after he was released in 1997, Yassin offered Israel a 10-year truce if Israel would withdraw its troops and settlers from all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. However, Yassin made it clear that even then, Hamas would continue to pursue its goal of replacing Israel with an Islamic state.

Yassin made the 30-year truce proposal while still in prison, Halevy said. Yassin ``sent the idea to King Hussein, who transferred the message to Israel,'' he said. However, the proposal was not discussed by the Israeli government, and then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may not have known about it before ordering the attack on Mashaal, he said.

``Perhaps the proposal would have been rejected as not serious, but it was definitely made,'' Halevy said in the TV interview.

Netanyahu is now Israel's finance minister. His office said Tuesday that such an offer by Yassin, if it was made, would have been ``worthless,'' because ``Yassin was involved in terrorism while in prison and encouraged terrorism in prison and outside.''

In 1997, Israel and the Palestinians were engaged in peacemaking based on a process of interim peace accords that began in 1993.

Hamas was trying to torpedo the efforts, sending suicide bombers to blow themselves up in Israeli buses and public places, leading Netanyahu to order the assassination of Mashaal, the most powerful Hamas leader outside the Palestinian areas.

[Nebr FAL owner]

So the late terrorist offers a truce that includes the right of the terrorists to continue killing jews while the truce is ongoing thats not a truce thats PR spin.

[Redcloak]

Isn't this kinda like Saddam stating that he was "ready to negotiate" with US forces as they dragged his sorry ass outta that spider hole?

[TBall]

If you don't have to buy time you shouldn't because time runs out.

[Fitzcarraldo]

Looks like Yassin didn't read the fine print.

[Bogey78O]

Yassin being a founder of Hamas stated in it's articles that peace truces are to be used against the enemies as the only way to defeat the jews is through jihad.

[FormerACLUmember]

This is from the Guardian. It is not a reliable paper for dog poop collection, much less truthful news.

[mewzilla]

Truce is Hamas-speak for a time-out to rearm.

[jwalsh07]

Evidently they weren't interested.

There's an old saying about sowing and reaping that applies here.

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

Truce Offer #7856
Excedrin Headache #1

[Alouette]

Hamas was observing a "truce" last August when they blew up the Kotel bus full of mothers and babies.

FRmail me to be added or removed from this Judaic/pro-Israel ping list.

WARNING: This is a high volume ping list

[KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle]

Yassin now has a working "truce" with Israel.

Israel solemnly swears not to blow him into tiny li'l bite-sized IslamoBits bits, ever again; just so long as he, in turn, pledges to remain decently dead.

Seems fair to me, by golly. :)

[Bobby777]

Official: Yassin Offered Israel A Truce

no truce with terrorist leaders ... don't look out the window Yasser Arafat ... it might be coming ... hopefully you're next ...

[cyborg]

yep! religion of PIECES

[Puddleglum]

I prefer to think of this guy as an involuntary suicide bomber. He doesn't get any virgins but he gets a coupon for all the pork rinds the afterlife can provide in its hotter climates.

[Tabi Katz]

I once heard someone - I forgot who - say that a "cease-fire" means the Israelis cease; the palis fire. Those terms HamASS would have been all to happy to accept.

[Nachum]

No more Hudnas. More lies, nothing more.

[Taiwan Bocks]

Yassin offered a truce?! Bovine scatology!

[paul51]

Yassin Offered Israel A Truce

I enjoyed the counteroffer a lot more

[COBOL2Java]

Of course, if you understand IslamoNazi "newspeak" then the word "TRUCE" basically means: you surrender so we can kill you, then everything's beautiful.