Hamas refuses to amend charter: Israel offered truce talks
GAZA, Feb 3: Defying international pressure, the Hamas said on Friday it would neither recognise Israel nor change its charter calling for the destruction of the Jewish state, but might be willing to negotiate terms for a temporary truce.
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 Mr 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.
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 recognise the legitimacy of the Zionist state that was established on our land,” Mr Meshaal, the Damascus-based head of the political and military wings of the group, wrote in a column titled ‘To whom it may concern’, published in the Al Hayat al Jadida newspaper on Friday.
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,” Mr Meshaal wrote.
Hamas officials say Mr Meshaal is the group’s supreme leader. There are other leaders who oversee political operations in Gaza and the West Bank but answer to Mr Meshaal.
Brushing aside Mr Meshaal’s suggestion as ‘verbal gymnastics’, Israeli officials demanded Hamas unequivocally recognise Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign state, abandon ‘terrorism’ and destroy its ‘terror’ infrastructure.
“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 organisation, 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.
US SUSPENDS AID PROJECTS: The United States has suspended the start of new projects in the Palestinian territories after Hamas’s election victory, but expects some US aid to flow in the future regardless of whether Hamas leads the Palestinian Authority government.
Jacob Walles, the US consul general in Jerusalem, said in an interview that Washington is concerned Hamas might turn to Iran for funding.
“We’re proceeding with (US aid) activities that are under way, but we’re not starting new activities. We don’t want to get into a situation where we may start something and not be able to finish it,” Walles said.
Mr 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 it collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority and put the money in an escrow account as it studied the implications of Hamas’s election victory.
The customs revenue is the main source of funding for the PA’s budget, and 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.
Hamas leaders have indicated the group might establish a government of technocrats so as not to compromise the financial aid that props up the near bankrupt Palestinian Authority.
In the West Bank, the Israeli army said its troops foiled a suicide bomb attack by capturing two Palestinians who attempted to smuggle suicide bomb belts through a military checkpoint. —Reuters
