The Palestinian group Hamas has sent a letter addressed to the US president via a US politician visiting Gaza, a senior UN official has said.
UN relief agency chief Karen Abu Zayd told the BBC the letter had been received by the UN and passed on.
She did not say if Senator John Kerry had accepted it, and there were no details about the letter's contents.
A former presidential candidate, Mr Kerry was visiting Gaza with US congressmen Brian Baird and Keith Ellison in the first such visit to the Hamas-run Strip since 2007. BBC
This is actually quite stunning news and the BBC article does not analyze nor comment further on this.
While there are no details on the letter's purpose nor what it might contain, Kerry and the two congressmen have given no indication that they are willing to meet with representatives of Hamas on this trip.
Middle East expert Hilde Henriksen Waage at the University of Oslo cannot recall a single time when Hamas has directly contacted an ally of Israel. The US position is that Hamas is a terrorist organization and that it has no intention of cooperating with the group that has governed Gaza since 2007. VG¹
¹[All translations from Norwegian are mine.]
Waage believes that this is a sign of desperation.
"If this is confirmed", opines Waage, "this shows how desperate the situation in Gaza is." The destruction from the Gaza war in January is enormous. Israel refuses to open the borders and the Palestinians are completely dependent on smuggler tunnels under the [Egyptian] border for necessary equipment. Waage therefor believes that the letter expresses a desire to negotiate a solution that gets Israel to reopen the borders.
"This is likely the consequence of an acute predicament, and shows how desperate they are. They clearly want to appeal to the great and powerful USA, to get president [Obama] to help them in this situation. I believe that such a letter wishes to convey that they are interested in a negotiated settlement. It would not be surprising should the letter state that they are interested in achieving a long term cease fire," she says.
If this turns out to be the case, it would imply Hamas' indirect recognition of the state of Israel.
"It would be an indirect recognition of Israel as a state, that Israel has come to stay, and signals that Hamas has no plans of taking over the whole area. But they will never state this directly," says Henriksen Waage.
This is why the letter likely won't have pivotal consequences for the relationship between these two bitter enemies. But it does show a definitive softening in Hamas' position. From being an organization driven by armed military conflict where terrorism was used to thwart the Oslo process during the '90s, Hamas is continually evolving in a direction where political solutions are becoming more dominant, according to this expert.
"Hamas is made up of many different fractions, but now its leadership is showing to a greater degree that it wants to continue its struggle politically," she says.
That said, she expresses surprise that this would result in a letter to the US president, who leads a nation in which 80% of the population desires to support Israel going forward.
"This is rather unexpected, and the sort of political action that hardly anyone would have predicted in the aftermath of the Gaza war," she says.
But she doesn't think Hamas should expect an answer from the White House.
"Obama has so far only changed Middle East policy rhetorically, while the actual content of US policies remains the same. Along with his very pro-Israel secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, he has made it clear that he wishes to avoid having anything to do with Hamas. Such a move would risk alienating strong pro-Israeli forces in US society. It would be highly controversial were he to answer a letter from a group that the USA has designated to be a terrorist organization," says Waage.
Kerry was also quick to underline that this trip changed nothing in the US attitude toward Hamas.