US pressured groups to shun Hamas: Meshaal: Gunmen attack ministries
SANAA, March 20: The Hamas group accused the United States on Monday of putting pressure on rival Palestinian factions to shun a Hamas-led government, leaving the militant group to govern alone.
Hamas’s failure to attract any partners and its move to appoint loyalists to top ministerial posts could bolster US and Israeli efforts to isolate the new government.
The group’s leader-in-exile Khaled Meshaal, in Yemen as part of a tour to gain political and financial support, said Israel could use a government solely run by Hamas as a pretext to launch strikes at Palestinians.
“United States placed pressure on ... Palestinian factions to not participate in the government so that the government will be purely Hamas and Israel can justify carrying out its plan to attack the Palestinian people,” Mr Meshaal told reporters.
The militant Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) became the last Palestinian faction on Sunday to turn down Hamas’s offer to form a coalition government.
Israel and the United States have called on other nations to boycott Hamas, which crushed President Mahmoud Abbas’s long-dominant Fatah faction in January parliamentary polls, until it disarms and recognises the Jewish state and interim peace deals.
Late on Sunday, Mr Meshaal said Arab states who have pledged financial aid will specify the amount of funds they will give when they meet at an Arab summit in Khartoum later this month.
Hamas, which presented its cabinet to Mr Abbas on Sunday, said it had won financial backing from states including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Qatar, but no figures have been officially announced.
MINISTRIES ATTACKED: The Hamas was given a stark reminder of the challenges awaiting it in power as gunmen attacked ministries on Monday and its chief donor stood by threats to cut funding.
A day after presenting a cabinet list to Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas, notable by its absence of other parties, the radicals were forced to acknowledge that there were tough times ahead once their programme is given the final approval of MPs.
Israel tried to turn the tables on Mr Abbas, saying he could vindicate his moderate reputation by rejecting Hamas’s government unless it respected the Jewish state’s right to exist and ‘renounces violence’.
Hamas’s landslide election victory on Jan 25 was largely due to the failure of Mr Abbas’s previously dominant Fatah faction to get to grips with a spiralling security chaos.
However, any thought that Hamas would be able to swiftly reverse the situation was dispelled on the streets of Gaza City on Monday when militants from the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, nominally loyal to Fatah, laid siege to two ministries.
The militants forced their way into the foreign and finance ministries, located in the same complex, where they proceeded to demand jobs.
Four people — two civilians, a policeman and a gunman — were wounded in the subsequent brief exchange of fire between militants and police officials.
In a separate incident, two policemen and a gunman were wounded in a shootout when Al Aqsa militants ambushed a police convoy near Erez, the main crossing point between the Gaza Strip and Israel.
The militants had blockaded the main road near Erez to demand the authorities give them jobs in the Palestinian security services.—Reuters/AFP
