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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan | ||||
| Hamas, Jihad urge Abbas to drop talks with Israel | ||||
| 2009-11-08 | ||||
[Ma'an] Ma'an/Agencies - Hamas and Islamic Jihad both advised President Mahmoud Abbas to give up peace talks with Israel and focus his efforts on creating inter-Palestinian unity following the leader's announcement that he would not run for re-election on 24 January.
"Courage dictates that we, as leaders of the Palestinians, be frank with our people and evaluate what compromise has brought us, decide together to suspend or freeze the political settlement process and pursue our real national options," he added. "Any leader who insists on the right of return for the Palestinian refugees and on restoring the land, even to the 1967 borders ... must know that the way to do this is not through negotiations or betting on the Americans but through holy struggle, resistance and national unity," Mash'al said.
Shallah traced what he called "compromise with Israel" back to the 1993 Oslo Accords, which he said had failed to prevent the creation of settlements and brought Palestine no closer to statehood since it had been at the end of the 1967 war when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza. The next step, for both Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Saturday statements indicated, was unity and resistance. "Our hand is stretched out to reconcile with our brothers in Fatah and the Palestinian presidency to achieve our national project," Mash'al told ralliers. The last attempt at reconciliation failed in mid-October, as Abbas pulled the Goldstone report from the UN Human Rights Council on request of the United States, which said prosecuting Israel for war crimes was secondary to the importance of achieving lasting peace. Abbas faced a huge outcry from Palestinian society, and meetings of the General Assembly and Human Rights Council were called or bumped up to address the Goldstone report. Hamas had said it could not sigh a unity document until the Palestinian Authority remedied its Goldstone mistake. Fatah signed the Egyptian mediated unity document on 14 October, as Hamas waited for the Goldstone debacle to be fixed. Following the passing of the resolution to adopt the Goldstone report in the UNHRC, however, Hamas said it still had concerns over the unity plan and said it would send a delegation to Cairo to discuss issues with mediators. Egypt did not accept the delegation and has not continued its conciliation efforts since. Also on Saturday, the Palestinian Legislative Council's deputy speaker, Hasan Khreisha, urged Hamas to "extend a hand to President Abbas, who made a courageous decision to end division and conclude national conciliation [by retiring], especially after settlement talks failed. In an interview, he added, "Hamas should invest in this position, go to President Abbas, and conclude the current problems to rescue the national cause from the unknown place it is headed." He said wrapping up division was a matter of urgency, as well, because "Israel will use any gained time to impose new facts on the ground... What is needed is an end to the division in order to confront Israel's plans." "Elections will be held whether Hamas likes it or not, so it ought to move urgently," he added. | ||||
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