AL QUDS, June 7: British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw opened talks on Tuesday with his Israeli counterpart Silvan Shalom after revealing in London that Britain had begun contacts with Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas. But after arriving in Israel, Straw appeared to backtrack from his comments and took aim at the group — classified as a terrorist group by Britain, the European Union and the United States — for waging “random terror”.
Hamas and rival militant group Islamic Jihad both claimed responsibility for an attack on Tuesday on a Jewish settlement in southern Gaza in which a Chinese and Palestinian worker were killed.
Straw said the violence “illustrates the wanton, random terror which the Hamas and other similar organisations are ready to practice to undermine peace and security here in Israel” and the Palestinian territories.
“We will have no dealings with the leadership of Hamas or other such organisations unless and until they wholly renounce violence and renounce their charter calling for destruction of the state of Israel,” he told reporters.
Shalom, leading a campaign to have the Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah also listed as a terror group in Brussels, said Hamas should remain blacklisted.
“Unfortunately the Hamas once again today fired missiles toward Israel. Hamas is trying very hard to undermine our efforts to move towards peace with the Palestinian Authority,” said the Israeli foreign minister.
“We believe Hamas should be left on the terrorist list,” he added.
Speaking on BBC radio before flying to the Middle East, Straw said Hamas’s success in recent local elections throughout the occupied Palestinian territories presented officials with a “dilemma”.
“Our diplomats in the occupied territories — as anywhere else in the world — see part of their job, indeed part of their job is, to have contact with elected representatives,” he said.
“In the occupied territories it is de rigeur, it is required, that if a diplomat of whatever level goes in to a town they go and talk to the mayor,” the foreign secretary said.
“What happened on two occasions — just two occasions — is that such discussions have taken place,” he said.
Straw recalled both in London and Al Quds that the British ban was imposed on Hamas while he served as home secretary.
On Wednesday, the British foreign policy chief is to meet Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas and his prime minister Ahmed Qorei in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
He will then return to Al Quds for talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Straw last visited Israel and the West Bank in November, shortly after veteran Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died in a Paris hospital.—AFP