GAZA CITY, 30 March 2005 — Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas expressed hope yesterday that militants will be brought into mainstream politics after radical group Islamic Jihad attended an PLO executive meeting for the first time. But Hamas, the biggest rival to the mainstream Fatah, warned there was still much to be agreed before the Islamist group joins the Palestine Liberation Organization, which groups the main secular factions.
“There is a good chance of at least agreeing on a political program,” Abbas told reporters after the meeting, which officials said focused on how Jihad and Hamas might join the PLO after years of boycott. “Our brothers in Islamic Jihad participated in this meeting and our brothers in Hamas will participate in the next meeting,” Abbas added.
The PLO executive committee issued a statement condemning Israeli settlement activity and accused the Jewish state’s “racist” separation fence across the West Bank of stealing Palestinian land. Mohammed Al-Hindi, a Jihad leader, said the talks covered politics, how the PLO will evolve in the future and “how and on what basis Hamas and Islamic Jihad would join the PLO”.
Meanwhile, furious with Israel’s planned pullout from occupied Gaza, Jewish settlers vowed yesterday to continue their protest on the ground after losing all political chances of scuppering the evacuation. The main Yesha settlers’ council convened the morning after MPs ruled out a referendum on the controversial plan to tear down all 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and four isolated outposts in the West Bank.
A plebiscite was seen as the last political chance to delay if not destroy Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan but the effort proved futile.
“Sharon is dreaming if he thinks he can carry out his disengagement,” Yesha spokeswoman Emilie Amroussi said after the meeting. But the council continued to insist publicly that all protests be conducted peacefully.
In another development, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz has accused the Palestinians of smuggling anti-aircraft missiles into the Gaza Strip and complained that Palestinian security services still lack cohesion.
“This crosses a red line for us,” Mofaz told The New York Times in an interview published yesterday ahead of talks in Washington with US officials. He said members of the Palestinian military intelligence had helped smuggle several shoulder-fired Strela missiles into Gaza and ordered a top Israeli commander to meet Palestinian military intelligence agency chief Mussa Arafat to demand that both the smugglers and the weapons be turned over to Israel.
