Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - If Hamas had agreed to be part of the Palestinian negotiations with Israel, the Palestinians would have had their own state by now, Israel's President Shimon Peres said on Monday.

"The problem with Hamas is not that they are our enemy but that they don't want to discuss it [the problem]," Peres told a meeting of foreign journalists at his residence in Jerusalem on Monday. Talking to Hamas is like talking to the wall, he said.

Hamas says it is ready for Israel to return to the 1967 borders (giving up control of the Gaza Strip, which Israel already left unilaterally in 2005, and the West Bank, including eastern Jerusalem), but even then, they won't recognize Israel, Peres said.

"They are a catastrophe for their own people."

Hamas leaders have expressed willingness to accept a truncated Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip but they have never recognized Israel's right to exist nor even hinted that they are willing to do so. The terror group has not renounced its goal of establishing an Islamic Palestinian State in all the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israel.

Peres, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, also scolded former U.S. President Jimmy Carter for his recent visit to the Middle East and for meeting with Hamas leaders.

According to a report in the London-based newspaper Asharq al-Awsat on Monday, Israel is expected to accept an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire with Hamas within days.

Israeli military and political experts have warned against such a move, saying it would be perceived as a Hamas victory and give the terrorist organization a chance to regroup and strengthen itself militarily. But nevertheless, Israeli leaders are said to be considering such a move.

Despite talk of a truce, thirteen rockets were launched at Israeli communities on Monday, including three that fell in the southern Israeli town of Sderot, lightly injuring one person, the army said.

Meanwhile Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in Jerusalem on Monday a few hours after the departure of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Rice was tough on Israel, calling for a removal of more roadblocks to improve the quality of lives for the Palestinians as well as telling Israel not to do anything that would prejudice the outcome of final status talks -- a reference to a demand that Israel halt all settlement construction in the West Bank.

Speaking on the occasion of Israel's 60th Independence Day this week, Peres, an octogenarian, who was a member of Knesset from 1959 until 2007, including two terms as prime minister and a host of other governmental positions, looked back at Israel during the last six decades.

During 3500 years of Jewish history, the worst decade that the Jewish people suffered was between 1940-1950, which saw both the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel, said Peres.

One of the things that is still unexplainable, he said, was how the majority of countries in the world refused to sell arms to the fledgling Jewish State even after the United Nations voted to create it.

During the last 60 years, the "great miracle" was that Israel won seven wars and two violent Palestinian uprisings and advanced to become a leading country in the areas of defense, agriculture, medicine and high-tech, Peres said.