THERE FOR THE TAKING:

It is rare for a Hamas official to grant an extensive interview to a Jewish media outlet. But these are unusual times. My contact with Badran came through the connections of Rabbi Michael Melchior, a peace activist and former minister in Ehud Barak's government, with members of the Islamic movement in Israel and abroad. In a two-hour interview held in a restaurant in Istanbul, and conducted in Arabic peppered with Hebrew, Badran expounded on his worldview: Yes to realistic, ad hoc understandings with Israel, no to final status agreements the likes of the Oslo Accords. He took pains to present his movement's position as pragmatic, not dogmatic or messianic. He suggests that his organization's beliefs are not unlike those of the ideological right in Israel.

"The entire Israeli right believes in the whole Land of Israel and we believe that all of Palestine is historically ours," Badran explains. "But having recognized reality and the changing international situation, we've agreed to a Palestinian state on a part of the territory which the entire world considers occupied."

Hamas' top political echelon--Badran among them--is currently engaged in indirect talks with Israel in Cairo to renew the 2014 ceasefire, which both sides largely observed up until the recent flareup this summer. "If the Israelis knew the conditions for a ceasefire, they would be out on the streets protesting against the government for its hesitation," he asserts. "We offer Israelis a ceasefire for an agreed upon time frame. They will no longer hear red alerts. No longer suffer field fires. For that, the price they would need to pay would be nothing."

"Nothing," according to Badran, means the permanent opening of border crossings with Gaza to people and goods. This, he explained, would alleviate the plight of the Strip's 2 million residents, who suffer from 80 percent unemployment with rampant sickness and hunger.  While Hamas continues to demand the construction of a sea port and an airport, Badran says those infrastructures are secondary to the daily needs of ordinary Gazans.

"It will take three years to construct a port. A year to rebuild the airport. But the average Palestinian doesn't need an airplane to fly in, he needs an airplane not to bomb him. He needs medical treatment, he needs food."

The reason for the deadlock in solving the Gaza crisis is twofold, Badran explained: Fatah's obstructionism and Israel's flawed decision making. Over the past two years, Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority has upped its ante in a bid to force Hamas to hand over security control in the Gaza Strip. It has refused to pay Gaza's electric bill to the Israel Electric Corporation; discontinued medical transfers of patients out of the Gaza Strip and shipments of medicine into it; and slashed salaries to tens of thousands of civil servants in the Hamas-held enclave. Badran also argues that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's competition with political rivals on the right ahead of the upcoming elections has prevented him from taking bold moves to end the Gaza conflict.

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