HAMAS went further than ever before yesterday towards accepting a two-state solution with Israel.

Speaking to The Times, Mahmoud al-Zahar, the new Foreign Minister, repeatedly refused to rule out that possibility and even raised the prospect of his Hamas-led Government putting the issue to the Palestinian people in a referendum.

The Islamic militant group has never accepted Israel’s right to exist but now that it is in government it faces huge pressure from the West to relent. Abandoning his hardline rhetoric, Dr al-Zahar said that Hamas was ready to enter talks with the international community over the prospect of Israeli and Palestinian states co-existing. But he gave warning that his Government would demand to know what Israel and the international com munity would offer in return.

“First we have to listen to answers,” he said at his Foreign Ministry office in Gaza City. “If it is very simple, if it is very clear, if it satisfies the Palestinian demands, we can decide. But if it is not, we have to consult, we have to ask the people. We are not the owners of Palestine.”

Challenged on how Hamas could deal with the so-called Quartet of the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia, which insists on a two-state solution enshrined in peace agreements, he said: “What is the concept in the Quartet about the two-state solution and on what basis? We have to ask that real question and after that we are going to discuss inside the Government. We are going to discuss with our president.

“We are going to discuss it in the legislative council and after that we may need to ask the general attitudes of our people. This is the land of the people. It is not the land of the Government. So how can we convince the people that they are going to denounce or renounce or accept these agreements? We have no final answer now. Let us wait, let us discuss and evaluate.”

His remarks still fell well short of international demands that Hamas recognise Israel and renounce violence. They are unlikely to satisfy Israel and the US, who regard Hamas as a terrorist organisation and have cut off all dealings with the new Palestinian Government.

Israeli soldiers yesterday detained Khaled Abu Arafeh, the new Jerusalem Minister, at a roadblock in the occupied West Bank. His Israeli identity papers do not permit him to cross into the Palestinianadministered area, even though he is a minister. He was released five hours later.

Dr al-Zahar said the arrest was a signal of Israel “escalating their aggression”. But the Palestinian Authority faces far graver problems, including financial meltdown within weeks if the West cuts $1 billion (£570 million) in aid and it cannot pay the salaries of 140,000 civil servants.

By raising the idea of a referendum on a two-state solution, Hamas may be looking for an acceptable way to circumvent the underlying principles of its 1988 charter, which calls for the destruction of the Jewish state.

But while undoubtedly softening Hamas’s rhetoric, Dr al-Zahar said that the Government would not stop the violence of other Palestinian factions such as Islamic Jihad and al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Israel, and even moderate Palestinians, remained suspicious of Hamas’s true intentions.

“Hamas are trying to show at least some verbal compromise to give the feeling that they are making concessions which fit the criteria of the international community, but they are not,” said Nizar Ammar, a retired general with the Palestinian Centre for Security and Strategic Studies.

Islamic Jihad fighters told The Times that they believed that Hamas was corrupted by power. “Our struggle will only end with the end of the state of Israel,” said one, Abu Ahmad.

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