section_path: Policies towards Israel and Palestine/Evolution of positions/2008–2016
section_name: 2008–2016
paragraph_text: 2008–2016
  
  In April 2008, former US President Jimmy Carter met with Khaled Mashal, the recognized Hamas leader since 2004. Mashal said to Carter, Hamas would "accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders " and accept the right of Israel "to live as a neighbour" if such a deal would be approved by a referendum among the "Palestinians". Nevertheless, Mashal did not offer a unilateral ceasefire (as Carter had suggested him to do). The US State Department showed utter indifference for Mashal's new stance; Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert even refused to meet with Carter in Jerusalem, not to mention paying attention to the new Hamas stance.
  
  On 19 June 2008, Hamas and Israel agreed to a six-month cease-fire, which Hamas declared finished at 18 December amidst mutual accusations of breaching the agreed conditions.
  
  Meanwhile, in November 2008, in a meeting with 11 European members of parliaments, Hamas senior official Ismail Haniyeh repeated what he had written in June 2006 to U.S. President George W. Bush but with one extra condition: "the Hamas government had agreed to accept a Palestinian state that followed the 1967 borders and to offer Israel a long-term hudna (truce), if Israel recognized the Palestinians' national rights " – a proposal which he said Israel had declined.
  
  In September 2009, Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, wrote to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that Hamas would support any steps leading to a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders: "We would never thwart efforts to create an independent Palestinian state with borders June 4, 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital."
  
  In May 2010, Khaled Mashal, chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau (thus Hamas' highest leader), again stated that a state "Israel" living nextto "a Palestinian state on the borders of 1967" would be acceptable for Hamas – but only if a referendum among "the Palestinian people" would endorse this arrangement. In November 2010, Ismail Haniyeh, also proposed a Palestinian state on 1967 borders, though added three further conditions: "resolution of the issue of refugees ", "the release of Palestinian prisoners", and "Jerusalem as its capital"; and he made the same reservation as Mashal in May 2010 had made, that a Palestinian referendum needed to endorse this arrangement.
  
  On 1 December 2010, Ismail Haniyeh (senior Hamas leader, see above), in a news conference in Gaza, repeated his November 2010 message: "We accept a Palestinian state on the borders of 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital, the release of Palestinian prisoners, and the resolution of the issue of refugees," but only if such arrangement would be endorsed by "a referendum" held among all Palestinians: in Gaza, West Bank, and the diaspora.
  
  In May 2011, Hamas and Fatah signed an agreement in Cairo, agreeing to form a ('national unity') government and appoint the Ministers "in consensus between them", but it contained no remarks about how to confront or deal with Israel. In February 2012, Hamas and Fatah signed the Fatah–Hamas Doha Agreement, agreeing (again) to form an interim national consensus government, which (again) did not materialize.
  
  Still in February 2012, according to the Palestinian authority (either the Fatah branch in West Bank or the Hamas branch in Gaza), Hamas forswore the use of violence against Israel ("ceasefire", an Israeli news website called it), followed by a few weeks without violence between Hamas and Israel. But violence between Israel and Palestinian militant groups, in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel, also involving Hamas, would soon resume.