Meretz Chairman Yossi Beilin said his party will seek to open a dialogue with Hamas without any preconditions.
"We won't place conditions for speaking with Hamas. If it wants to talk to us – we'll talk with it," said Beilin at the Shoshana Johnson pub in Tel Aviv.
The meeting was also attended by former Knesset Member Ilan Gilon.
According to Beilin, "true to now, Hamas has not completely decided either. I hear three yearnings coming from them, like at the Khartoum conference: No to negotiations with Israel, not to recognition, and no to peace. We have no terms for dialogue, but we do have terms for negotiations – they must reject those yearnings. We don't rule them out just because they are called Hamas. We will try and reach negotiations, but we won't invest too many months into that. If it turns out not to be realistic, we'll support a unilateral exit. We'd prefer a partner, even a weak partner.
"Even a partner with hair on his face," joked Gilon.
Dozens of Meretz youth activists attended the event.
Meretz's Chairman of Young Meretz Uri Zaki told supporters: "We chose to hold the event here, because this is part of our message – Meretz is a party for the young," he said.
"Our campaign is also a young campaign, and many of the party veterans are already criticizing it. Meretz is an avant-garde party, which has always been young in its spirit. In addition to that, the things we are saying will be relevant to the consensus in a number of year, as the things we said in the past are relevant today."