GAZA, 12 March 2003 — Palestinian hard-liners rejected the creation of the post of Palestinian prime minister as a ploy imposed by the United States and Israel and vowed to continue attacks against Israel.
The Palestinian Parliament on Monday approved appointing a premier nominated by President Yasser Arafat under pressure from international mediators to help defuse the 29-month-old conflict with Israel and revive the peace process. Palestine Liberation Organization moderate Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, was expected to take the job. He strongly backs renewed peacemaking and has called for an end to militant attacks on Israelis, saying they have set back Palestinian statehood goals.
But the leading Muslim resistance groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, dismissed the political change as a ploy imposed by the United States and Israel to crush “resistance to occupation”. “We will continue our resistance to the Zionist enemy with all possible means and everywhere and we will not be stopped either by a Palestinian or a Zionist,” senior Islamic Jihad official Abdallah Al-Shami said.
Abdel-Aziz Al-Rantissi, senior political leader in the larger Hamas which wields major influence in the Gaza Strip, reiterated the party’s rejection of attempts to resume peace talks with Israel and said militancy was the “sole solution.”
“Hamas’ choice is the resistance and it will continue its resistance,” he said.
Rantissi said years of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations over terms of Palestinian statehood in Gaza and the West Bank, which collapsed in mid-2000, had proven futile.
“This decision (to create a prime minister) was a Zionist and American one. They even imposed the name of a prime minister. Therefore, the whole issue is completely rejected by all Palestinians,” Shami said. “Abu Mazen is coming to implement a US and Zionist plan”.
Rantissi said a Palestinian prime minister would have the single mission of “stopping the uprising”.
Asked whether Hamas would be willing to give Abbas a chance to carry out his program, Rantissi said: “Hamas does not believe in political negotiations. As long as occupation exists resistance is the sole solution.”
Meanwhile, fighting between Israelis and Palestinians cost five more lives, including an Israeli soldier killed in a Hebron shootout. The bodies of two Palestinians from Islamic Jihad, killed by Israeli tank fire overnight near the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom in the Gaza Strip, were found yesterday morning, security officials said. The army said they were carrying several bombs.
In Hebron, an Israeli sergeant was killed and five other soldiers wounded, one of them seriously, when they were ambushed by Palestinian fighters late on Monday.
