Mashaal: Lack of solution to conflict will lead to ‘bloodbath’

The lack of a solution to the Palestinian issue will lead to an open conflict in the Middle East — a “bloodbath” — Hamas’s political bureau chief Khaled Mashaal alleged, adding that the violent terror attacks in Jerusalem were a reaction to “Israeli aggression.”

“Israeli stubbornness, combined with the international impotence in solving the Palestinian issue with a just solution, enabling the Palestinian people their self-determination  —  this will lead to chaos in the region, not just in the Palestinian arena, but an open conflict  —  a bloodbath. We warn against keeping the Palestinian issue with no solution and stripping the Palestinian people of hope,” Mashaal said in an interview with Sky News Thursday.

The Qatar-based Hamas leader, whose terror group openly calls for the destruction of Israel, and which fired some 4,500 rockets and other projectiles at Israel during the summer’s war, blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the recent violence in Jerusalem, in which a spate of Palestinian terror attacks have killed nearly a dozen Israelis since mid-October. He accused Netanyahu of “playing with fire” and turning a “national fight” into a “religious fight” for allowing Knesset members and “extremists” to access the Temple Mount.

Under current arrangements at the site, the holiest in Judaism and third most-sacred in Islam, non-Muslim visitors are allowed but Jewish prayer is forbidden.

Just last month, the Shin Bet security service said members of a Hamas terror ring in the West Bank, run from the organization’s headquarters in Turkey, sought to carry out an array of major attacks, including on Jerusalem’s main soccer stadium and its light rail line.

Mashaal said the spike in violence was a “reaction” to Israeli actions, adding that the massacre at Jerusalem’s Har Nof synagogue on November 18 — “one of the rare occasions when a synagogue was targeted” — was caused by “extreme anger” at the situation on the Temple Mount, which houses the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock.

Four worshipers at prayer and a Druze policeman who tried to stop the attack were hacked and shot to death at the synagogue by two cousins from East Jerusalem’s Jabel Mukaber, in the deadliest terror attack in years.

The Hamas leader said Netanyahu bore responsibility for the actions of the terrorists and “for them not having hope on the horizon for a just settlement of the Palestinian cause.”

Praising what seems to be a lack of leadership of such terrorists — whom Israel has labeled “lone-wolf” attackers — Mashaal said that “when the public anger reaches its limit, it explodes on its own, and expresses itself in ways that surprises everyone.”

He refrained from directly criticizing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who condemned the terror attack at the synagogue, but said the security coordination between the Israeli security establishment and PA forces in the West Bank was unacceptable.

He added that the path of negotiations with Israel, pursued by Abbas, was proven as “useless” and a failure. The PA president, who “has positions which satisfies western and American standards,” has received nothing in return, Mashaal charged, before concluding that the “Israeli occupation as it is, like all occupations in history, won’t withdraw from occupied lands, except under pressure, they do not withdraw voluntarily.”

“The Israeli behavior is giving us this clear message,” Mashaal continued.

Hamas outrightly rejects Israel’s right to exist and has refused to renounce terrorism. Its charter also rejects any negotiated agreements, calling them “vain endeavors,” and adds that the only solution is jihad.

Since violently ousting Abbas’s PA from Gaza in 2007, Hamas has diverted resources there to manufacture rockets and dig cross-border tunnels into Israel, emplacing its war machine in the heart of Gaza’s residential areas. It has fought three rounds of conflict with Israel, the latest being this summer’s 50-day war.

Taking a more conciliatory tone toward the PA, the Hamas leader said in the Sky News interview that his group was committed to the reconciliation process with Abbas, and was not pursuing “sole power.”

“Hamas wants to be a partner with its people, powers and personalities, to create a promising Palestinian future,” he said.

While Mashaal lashed out at the international community for not doing more to solve the conflict, he welcomed the recent decisions by some European parliaments to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state, albeit symbolically.

“The question is what [is] Palestinian position required from Hamas or from Fatah or from the other Palestinian factions that will satisfy the international world to help us achieve our goals? We showed every flexibility required to reach a solution when the Palestinian powers all agreed to a resolution based on the 1967 border. The West rejected it and the Israelis rejected it and there are parties that conspired against it. What does the international community want?”

Mashaal said that the 50-day war fought over the summer between Israel, Hamas and other Gaza-based terror groups, is what led to “changes in the Western positions” on the Palestinian issue and the spate of recognitions in European parliaments.

Israel launched Operation Protective Edge on July 8 to stop Hamas and other groups’ indiscriminate rocket fire on Israeli cities and to destroy the terror tunnels that infiltrate into Israeli territory.

During the operation, Hamas rejected a number of ceasefire proposals and violated a number of those that were agreed to.

Israel lost 66 soldiers and six civilians, and a Thai agricultural worker, in the month-long conflict. while the Palestinian death toll surpassed 2,100, according to Hamas officials in Gaza. Israel said half of the Gaza dead were gunmen and blamed Hamas for all civilian deaths because it operated against Israel from residential areas, placing Gazans in harm’s way.

US-brokered peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority ended in late April after Abbas signed a unity pact with Hamas. Netanyahu has refused to continue negotiations with a government that rests on the support of a terror group.

The Palestinians are now headed to the UN Security Council to present a draft calling for a an Israeli pullout to the 1967 lines, within the time frame of two years.