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Hamas resists pressure to recognize Israel
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-02-04 09:29
Defying international pressure, militant Islamic group Hamas said on Friday
it would never recognize Israel but might be willing to negotiate terms for a
temporary truce with the Jewish state.
Khaled Meshaal, the top leader of Hamas which won last week's Palestinian
parliamentary election by a landslide, made the offer to Israel ahead of
negotiations between Hamas and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas over the
shape of the next government.
Ismail Haniyeh, a senior Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, said he and other
Hamas officials expected to meet Abbas in Gaza on Saturday to begin to "consult
over the nature of the coming government" and to try to set a date for the first
meeting of the Palestinian parliament.
Israeli policemen watch as Palestinians pray
on the street near Al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem's Old city February 3,
2006. [AP] | The United States and European Union have demanded that Hamas renounce
violence, disarm and change its charter calling for the destruction of the
Jewish state or risk losing foreign aid to a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.
But Hamas leaders have stood firm.
"We will never recognize the legitimacy of the Zionist state that was
established on our land," Meshaal, the Damascus-based head of the political and
military wings of the militant Islamic group, wrote in a column titled "To whom
it may concern," published in al-Hayat al-Jadida newspaper.
Hamas leaders have said they might heed a truce with Israel as an interim
measure that could include the establishment of a Palestinian state in the Gaza
Strip and occupied West Bank, but would not abandon a long-term goal to destroy
Israel.
"If you (Israel) are willing to accept the principle of a long-term truce
then we will be ready to negotiate with you over the conditions of such a
truce," Meshaal wrote.
Hamas officials say Meshaal is the group's supreme leader. There are other
leaders who oversee political operations in Gaza and the West Bank but answer to
Meshaal.
Brushing aside Meshaal's suggestion as "verbal gymnastics," Israeli officials
demanded Hamas unequivocally recognize Israel's right to exist as a sovereign
state and abandon terrorism.
"Anything short of that will simply maintain the current situation in which
the absolute majority of the community of nations determine Hamas to be a
terrorist organization, and as such, not a legitimate interlocutor for political
negotiation," said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev.
Haniyeh said Hamas's conditions for a long-term truce included an Israeli
withdrawal from the West Bank as well as its release of all Palestinian
prisoners.
U.S. SUSPENDS AID PROJECTS
The United States has suspended the start of new projects in the Palestinian
territories after Hamas's election victory, but some U.S. aid is expected to
flow in the future regardless of whether Hamas leads the Palestinian Authority
government.
Meshaal dismissed the international pressure, saying in his column: "Our
message to the United States and Europe is the attempts you are exerting to make
us abandon our principles and struggle will be wasted and will not achieve any
results."
Israel on Wednesday froze the transfer of some $55 million in taxes, the main
source of the Palestinian Authority's funding which it collected on the PA's
behalf, as it studied the implications of Hamas's election victory.
The customs revenue is used to pay 140,000 government workers.
Political sources said interim Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's cabinet
would discuss on Sunday whether to allow the payment to go through to the
interim Palestinian government which is not yet run by Hamas.
Violence in the region continued on Friday when militant group Islamic Jihad
fired rockets into southern Israel striking a house and wounding three people
including a baby. Israel responded with artillery fire into the northern Gaza
Strip.
Israeli aircraft struck Hizbollah positions in south Lebanon after the group
fired rockets at northern Israel. One soldier was wounded at an army outpost in
the disputed Shebaa Farms area on the border between the two countries, while a
Lebanese woman was wounded in the air strikes.
In the West Bank, the army said its troops foiled a suicide bomb attack by
capturing two Palestinians who attempted to smuggle suicide bomb belts through a
military checkpoint.
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