GAZA CITY: With Palestinians under heavy US pressure to reach a ceasefire agreement with the Israelis and implement an international "roadmap" for peace, the radical group Hamas was keeping its options open Sunday and trying to avoid isolation. After a week of relentless Israeli strikes against the movement's leaders and militants, Hamas appeared to be toning down its bellicose declarations against Israel and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmud Abbas' government.
| Guess they're talking about stuff like "ceasefire is not in our vocabulary" |
While the group remains officially opposed to any ceasefire arrangement with Israel, it agreed to join Egyptian-brokered inter-Palestinian talks which are ultimately aimed at reaching a truce. "We will not boycott the Egyptians, we are always in contact with them. If the delegation arrives today, there will be meetings," senior political leader Abdul Aziz al-Rantissi told AFP on Sunday. "This dialogue should start from a clear basis which promotes the national interest of the Palestinians. Then the Hamas will participate in the dialogue," added Rantissi, who himself survived an Israeli assassination bid last week. An Egyptian delegation arrived for separate talks with all the main factions, before bringing them all to the same table in a bid to revive the national dialogue and reach a ceasefire deal. Palestinian Information Minister Nabil Amr said after a cabinet meeting Sunday the government had received "positive signs" from radical groups and that he was "sure" the coming contacts would yield results. The arrival of the delegation headed by an aide of Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman coincides with that of US envoy John Wolf and his team tasked with monitoring the progress of the road map. Hamas is fiercely opposed to the blueprint, which proposes the creation of a Palestinian state covering a tiny fraction of what the group advocates in its charter.
| Its efforts to derail it have been spectacularly not subtle... |
But the group realises it has more to lose by escalating its campaign of suicide bombings and other anti-Israeli violence, a source close to Hamas said. While the group has been feeling the heat from Israel's formidable war machine over the past week, its funding channels are running dry and it could be hurt by further confrontation with the Palestinian Authority controlled by the mainstrean Fatah, the source said.
| Fatah's afraid of them. Abbas won't crack down on them because it'll lead to civil war — which the PA might not win, and which'll be even more destructive regardless of who does.. |
"Hamas will negotiate. It cannot confront the Authority, because it will lose everything," warned the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The inspiration behind the group when it was founded in 1987 is the Muslim Brotherhood, which has always favoured a soft, integrated approach, gaining weight within the system to promote its views," he said. "Hamas needs dialogue to achieve its political goals," he added. Hamas broke off dialogue with Abbas two days after the moderate prime minister angered Palestinian radicals by using the term "terrorism" for their military operations and vowing to end the armed intifada, at the Israeli-Palestinian-US summit in Aqaba, Jordan on June 4. "Hamas is also feeling the international noose tightening around its neck. Under US pressure, the money is not flowing from its foreign sources as well as it used to," the same official said.
| And FoxNews sez Bush is cracking down on their funding channels... |
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