Ahmed Yousef, the political adviser to Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, is soon going to publish a new book, in English. Its title: "The End of the Jewish State: Just a Matter of Time." The new work will be a sequel to an earlier book by Yousef, one of the leading policy advisers to Haniyeh in Gaza, "The Binational State." The nattily dressed adviser, who is considered a characteristic representative of the moderate wing in Hamas, says he does not hate Israelis or Jews; he just believes Zionism is approaching its end and that in its wake the idea of the Jewish state will also wither and fade.

"Your state is temporary, but the Jewish people will continue to live," Yousef said consolingly this week to an Israeli guest in his office, which is adjacent to the Prime Minister's Bureau. "You will be able to live with us here, in one state, as you lived peacefully under the flag of Islam for hundreds of years."

In recent weeks the idea of a binational state under Islamic rule has been enjoying renewed popularity among Hamas spokesmen. "The Golden Age of the Jews was in Andalusia," they recall. "The Muslims never did you harm." A long-term interim settlement with Israel can also be considered, Yousef believes. The terms? "We will give you a hudna [cease-fire] for 50-60 years. You will give the right of return to all the 1948 refugees, to their homes."

It is unlikely that Hamas is deluding itself into believing this to be a realistic plan, but the aggressive declarations are aimed inward, at the traditional supporters of Hamas, rather than at Israel and the international community. In any event, prospects for negotiations with Israel look faint at the moment, and as far as the veteran members of Hamas are concerned, the fact that the organization has not perpetrated attacks on Israel for more than a year and a half is detrimental to its prestige.

"People are calling us traitors," Salah al-Bardawil, spokesman of the Hamas faction in the parliament, told Haaretz this week. "We are being accused of having become a group of power-hungry people and of having forgotten the precept of the jihad."...