Doha Al-Arab in Arabic on 26 July publishes an interview with Muhammad al-Hindi; a leading figure in Islamic Jihad, by Ibrahim Rajab in Cairo, in which he touches upon the need for national reconciliation among different Palestinian factions. He also speaks about negotiations with Israel, and relations with Hezbollah and Iran. Al-Hindi is on an undeclared visit to Cairo from where he intends to leave for Saudi Arabia to perform minor pilgrimage. Asked about how he views the prospects of the calm in the Gaza Strip and to what extent it is affected by the internal Israeli struggles, Al-Hindi says: "The Islamic Jihad is committed to the calm, but Israel is trying to create a negative atmosphere from time to time that affects it." He adds: "Israel is responsible for poisoning the atmosphere of the calm by assassinating an activist in Nablus in the first week of the calm." He concludes: "If a shift happens in the Israeli premiership, the calm might go 'with the wind'."
Asked about the position of the Islamic Jihad towards Israeli attempts to link the release of the captured Israeli soldier Gil'ad Shalit to the subject of the calm, he says: "Shalit's issue is not on the table and can not be accepted within the framework of the calm. What was proposed by Baraq [Israeli defence minister] is the acceleration of Shalit's release." He adds: "Calm is the way for solving the issue of Shalit. The price of Shalit is the release of the Palestinian prisoners from the occupation jails. The price of the calm is the halt of the Israeli aggression, opening of the [border] crossings, and lifting the blockade."
Asked about where the efforts of the Islamic Jihad ended regarding the mediation about starting a dialogue between Fatah and Hamas, he said that putting the Palestinian house in order and restoring the Palestinian national consensus is a complicated subject, and there are pressures exerted, in addition to the prevalence of a difficult atmosphere on the ground. He adds: "There are strong US and Israeli pressures in order not to have internal Palestinian dialogue. Despite this fact, we have made efforts to repair this disintegration that hit the internal Palestinian structure. Sometimes we succeeded, but the successes were limited and small."
Asked how he views the outbidding between the old and forthcoming US Administrations regarding the Israeli-Arab conflict in the light of the verbal promises to the Arabs and the real support for the Jewish character of the state of Israel, he says: "The two-state solution that the US administration adopts is an Israeli invention to solve a problem that Israel may face in the future. [President] Bush is the most biased US president in favour of Israel and he adopts the vision of the Israeli right. He is more Zionist than many other Zionists and that was clear in the speech he delivered before the Knesset."
Asked about Israeli condition of not smuggling arms into the Gaza Strip or manufacturing them since Israel wants to achieve through the calm what it could not achieve through military operations, he says: "This is nonsense since you can not ask a resisting faction to stop developing itself." He adds: "Those are blackmail and media exaggeration. What is proposed is calm in return for calm and lifting the blockade." He points out that the calm was once given unilaterally by the Palestinian factions in 2003and 2005, but Israel violated it by assassinating Isma'il Abu-Shanab and Thabit Thabit. He concludes that even when Israel gives its approval to the calm, it may violate it [at any time].