"Keep working on it. I'm sure we can get them to bite again..."
 Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei said on Monday he would soon hold talks with the Islamic Resistance group, Hamas, for the purpose of reaching a new hudna or ceasefire with the Zionist regime. âWe will hold talks with all Palestinian national and Islamic forces in order to reach a general consensus on a our course of action,â Qurei said during a television interview. Qurei said he would under no circumstances allow inter-Palestinian fighting to take place, saying âthe shedding of Palestinian blood by Palestinian hands is unthinkable and forbidden.â
| "We prefer killing everybody else to killing each other. Besides, they'd win." |
However, the PA premier said he was willing and ready to enter immediately into talks with the Zionists on condition they put an end to their onslaught of murder and terror against the Palestinians.
| "Only onslaughts of murder and terror against Jews are permissible..." |
Qurei also praised Hamas leadership for âdisplaying national responsibility.â Earlier, Hamas satrap spokesman in Gaza Abdul Aziz al Rantissi said his movement was not seeking talks with the Qurei government over a new ceasefire with the Zionists. Rantissi, who escaped a Zionist assassination attempt on his life in June, argued that reaching a ceasefire with the Zionists at this time would amount to an outright surrender. He suggested that the Zionists would have to stop all attacks on the Palestinians, including assassinations of Palestinian activists and political leaders as well as the destruction of Palestinian homes and apartment buildings, as a precondition for any future truce. Rantissi said though Hamas would not oppose the Palestinian government even though it had no intention to join it. The term of the present emergency Palestinian government is due on 5 November. Palestinian sources expect PA chairman Yasser Arafat to ask Qurei to form a new broad-based government whose main priority would be reach a cease fire with the Zionist regime and implement the nearly moribund American-backed so-called peace plan known as the roadmap.
| The one Hamas scuttled. Remember the bus bomb? |
|