The ruling Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) Thursday renewed its rejection to recognize Israel, a day after the movement's exiled leader Khaled Mashaal said in Damascus that the Jewish state was an existed fact.

"No change was made on the movement's policy towards recognizing Israel," Ismail Radwan, a spokesman for Hamas, told reporters in Gaza.

Mashaal, the politburo chief of the Hamas movement, said in an interview with Reuters on Wednesday that Israel was a fact and that Hamas could recognize it once a Palestinian statehood is established.

"There will remain a state called Israel," Mashaal said in what appeared to be clearest statement yet by a leader from the Islamic group on the attitude toward the Jewish state which was thought by the group previously had no right to exist.

But Radwan reiterated that Mashaal's remarks were misunderstood, saying that Mashaal did not mean to force the Palestinians to recognize Israel by calling it an existed fact.

As for the talks with rival Fatah movement led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas over forming a unity Palestinian government, the spokesman said that Hamas insists to nominate incumbent Prime Minister Ismail Haneya, who is also a senior Hamas official, to head any future Palestinian unity government.

Talks between Hamas and Fatah over unity government collapsed in late November, dashing Palestinian hopes that an end to Western sanctions on the current Hamas administration could be in sight.

In the wake of the collapse of unity government talks, Abbas called in early December for early elections, triggering factional infighting between Hamas and Fatah in the Palestinian territories.

Source: Xinhua