GAZA CITY, 11 April 2006 — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas vowed to fight Israeli bid to isolate the Hamas-run government as financial pressure on the beleaguered regime intensified yesterday.

As European Union foreign ministers approved a decision to suspend aid to the Palestinian Authority, Abbas called on the international community to end its “unfair” treatment of his people and instead help them realize their dream of independence.

His office revealed that Abbas would embark this month on a tour of Europe and North Africa in a bid to counter Israel’s own diplomatic offensive which has seen acting Premier Ehud Olmert institute a boycott of any foreign officials who make contacts with Hamas ministers.

“We call on the Israeli government to stop these measures which are only intended to isolate the Palestinian Authority,” said Abbas in a speech at his Ramallah headquarters on the West Bank.

“We will not accept this, we will not allow this to become a reality. We will emerge from this isolation whatever the cost.” Olmert on Sunday said that all contacts would be frozen with what he called a “hostile authority,” referring to Hamas’ refusal to renounce the use of violence or recognize the Jewish state’s right to exist. “We say to the Israeli government that we are a peaceful nation but we want our rights,” said Abbas, whose own Fatah faction was defeated by Hamas in a January parliamentary election.

He said that the Palestinian people wanted what had already been promised to them, mainly a viable state. “Is this too much to ask? Is this too much for the world to handle?”

Hamas’ Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has accused the European Union and Washington, which both regard Hamas as a terrorist organization, of trying to “blackmail” his government by cutting funds to a democratically elected government.

Washington and Brussels, however, insist that the Islamists, who have held off attacks for the past year, must unequivocally renounce the use of violence and recognize Israel if they want to be brought in from the cold. Hundreds of Palestinian youths took part in a protest in Gaza City yesterday against the EU move, hurling eggs at the United Nations headquarters from where local EU staff are currently working.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw however defended the funding freeze.

“Hamas has got to recognize that being elected as a government, democratically, they have responsibilities as democrats to do what everybody else has to do as a democrats, which is to eschew violence,” he said at the meeting in Luxembourg.

After the deaths of 15 Palestinians in strikes over the weekend, Palestinian medical sources said a three-year-old girl was killed yesterday when a shell landed on a house in the Beit Lahiya region. Twelve others were wounded.

— With input from agencies