JERUSALEM -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday expressed hope that a successful negotiated vision of a Palestinian state will marginalize Hamas, the militant group that controls the Gaza Strip.
"There will have to come a time when the Palestinian people will have to decide whether the prospect of that state is in their interest, and I think they will decide that it is," Rice said after meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. "But people are going to have to accept that it means accepting the existence of Israel and the right of Israel to exist."
Rice met with Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah as part of several days of meetings building toward a proposed peace conference next month in Annapolis, Md.
She repeatedly called for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. But she also made it clear that Hamas' Islamist movement, which won Palestinian parliamentary elections last year and calls for Israel's destruction, would have no role in upcoming negotiations.
"We've been very clear what the criteria are for involvement in this process," she said.
"If you're going to have a two-state solution, you have to accept the right of the other party to exist. If you're going to have a two-state solution that is born of negotiation, you're going to have to renounce violence."
Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in June, ending a short-lived unity government with the Palestinian president's Fatah faction. Abbas then fired Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas and since has been treated by Israel and the West as the sole legitimate Palestinian leader.