Hudna: a long-term truce without recognition
A ceasefire for 10, 30 or more years in exchange for Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines, without recognising Israel or ending the claims. Hamas has offered versions of it since the 1990s.
What happens to Israeli Jews
Years of quiet, possibly decades, but no recognition, no end of claims, and a truce that the other side's own tradition defines as temporary. Israel would give up territory and security depth in exchange for a pause.
What happens to Palestinians
A state in practice on the 1967 lines, without giving up the right of return or the claim to the rest of the land. Hamas presents this as compatible with its principles because a hudna isn't peace.
What it requires
- Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines, evacuation of settlements, and release of prisoners (the conditions in the offers)
- Israel accepting a neighbour that openly keeps the aim of replacing it once the truce ends
- Someone to enforce it: who stops rearmament during the truce?
- Hamas speaking for Palestinians, or the PLO accepting a Hamas-led arrangement
Who supports it
Offered by Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin in 1994 to Israeli interrogators, and again in 1997 (through Jordanian mediators, up to 30 years) and 1999; repeated by Hamas leaders in the 2000s with durations of 10 to 100 years ⚠. Hamas's 2017 'Document of General Principles' accepts a state on the 1967 lines as a 'formula of national consensus' while rejecting recognition of Israel and keeping the claim to all of Palestine. No Israeli government has accepted it. Supporters see it as a pragmatic opening toward two states; critics, pointing to the term's use in early Islamic history as a truce with an enemy one intends to defeat later, see it as a pause to regroup.
What history says
- The Treaty of Hudaybiyyah (628), the classic model of a hudna, a ten-year truce that ended within two years
- The 1949 armistice agreements: truces without recognition that lasted until 1967
- The Korean armistice (1953): no peace treaty, seventy years of armed quiet
- Israel–Hamas ceasefires in Gaza (2008–2021), each followed by a rebuilt arsenal and another war
The hard questions
- Is a truce without recognition a step toward peace, or a way to fight later from a better position?
- Would the 1967 lines plus a hudna give Israelis more safety than they have now, or less?
- Who would enforce demilitarisation during a truce, and what would happen when it expired?
- Could a hudna be the practical first stage of a two-state deal even if its authors mean something else by it?