GAZA CITY, 4 May 2006 — Hamas could reciprocate Israeli moves toward peace if the Jewish state agreed to withdraw from all lands occupied in 1967 and acknowledged Palestinian rights, the group’s political leader Khaled Mashaal said in Damascus yesterday.
Reacting to the statement, Israeli President Moshe Katsav reiterated that talks with the Palestinian government could not commence unless Hamas renounced violence, recognized the Jewish state and interim Palestinian peace deals with it.
“If Israel withdrew to the 1967 borders, including Jerusalem, acknowledges the right of return, lifts its siege, dismantles the settlements and the wall and releases the prisoners, then it is possible for us as Palestinians and Arabs to make a serious step to match the Zionist step,” he said.
Mashaal, who is in exile in Syria, told a packed auditorium at Damascus University that there was “no chance for a compromise” unless Israel fulfilled such conditions and because it was unlikely to do so in the near future, the Palestinians had no option but to resist occupation.
“What do we have to talk about with them?” Katsav told Israel’s NRG Maariv website. “They do not recognize our right to exist and are unwilling to talk to us.” Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh told reporters in Gaza that “ending the occupation and returning Palestinian rights” was a condition for any cease-fire or peace agreement.
Hamas, which has largely abided by a cease-fire for more than a year, has been under increasing Western and Israeli financial pressure to recognize the Jewish state, abandon armed struggle and accept interim Israeli-Palestinian peace deals.
“If (the Palestinian leadership) accepts the terms ... then we will conduct a political negotiation with it,” said Katsav, whose position is largely ceremonial and does not dictate diplomatic policy.
Mashaal slammed international pressure on the Palestinian Authority that has left some 165,000 civil servants without pay as “an international crime” and said Palestinians have the right to resist Israeli occupation.
“We’re in a battle with Israel because Israel occupied our land and forced our people into destitution; the problem is not in Hamas, it is Israeli behavior,” he said.
He said that since the truce, Israel forces killed 260 Palestinians, wounded 1,700, detained 6,750, including women and children, and confiscated 3.6 million sq-meters of Palestinian land to build a “separation wall,” he said.
Israel says the wall, a network of fences and concrete walls snaking through the West Bank, is meant to stop bombers. The World Court has ruled that the wall is illegal.
Israeli acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whose Cabinet is set to be sworn in today, has said Israel would be willing to quit some occupied West Bank lands in exchange for peace.
But he has also said Jerusalem, including the Arab eastern half captured in the 1967 Middle East War, would always be Israel’s “eternal and undivided capital.”
Olmert has also said that in the absence of peace talks, Israel would aim to set a border with the Palestinians by 2010, with the route largely following a wall Israel is building that cuts into West Bank land Palestinians want for a state.
Meanwhile, Jordan and Indonesia yesterday urged the international community not to halt aid to the Palestinian government, during a visit by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
King Abdallah and Yudhoyono agreed during talks in Amman “on the importance of pursuing economic and financial aid to the Palestinians,” Jordan’s Foreign Minister Abdel Ilah Al-Khatib told a news conference. They also agreed on efforts to resume Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations, he said.
— With input from agencies
