Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel, has long maintained that it will enter into a long-term truce if Israel pulls out of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and agrees to a right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees.

Speaking on the Charlie Rose program on US PBS television, Meshaal directly addressed the issue of armed resistance, which is the basis of its ideology as a national liberation movement.

"Israel started (the conflict) by the occupation so the resistance is a reaction. The action is the occupation, and the reaction from the Palestinians is that it ends," Meshaal said, in an interview taped on Thursday, according to a transcript released by PBS.

"So when the occupation comes to an end, the resistance will end, as simple as that. If Israel would go to the 1967 borders ... that will be the end of the Palestinian resistance."

Meshaal said if a "Palestinian state with real sovereignty" were established under the conditions he set out, then the nature of any subsequent ties with Israel would be decided democratically by the Palestinians.

Hamas had said it could live peacefully alongside Israel if a two-state solution was reached in which all occupied Palestinian land was returned, even though its 1988 founding charter calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state in all of pre-1948 British-mandate Palestine.

Reuters