GAZA CITY, 10 October 2006 — The Qatari foreign minister was due to shuttle between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas yesterday in a bid to calm deadly tensions and break the deadlock on forming a unity government. Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassem Bin Jabr Al-Thani was expected in Gaza City where he was to meet separately with Abbas, of the moderate Fatah movement, and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of the Islamist Hamas, one senior official said.
The presidency spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeina told reporters that the meeting between Abbas and the Qatari minister “is very important.” He added that “President Abbas will met Al-Thani to continue the serious and honest discussion, which was carried out last week,” when Abbas visited the Qatari capital, Doha.
“He will discuss the forming of a national unity government and will try to bring both sides closer,” the source said on condition of anonymity.
Abbas arrived in Gaza City, the seat of the Hamas-led government, in the early afternoon ahead of his expected meeting with the Qatari diplomat, having traveled from his West Bank political power base of Ramallah. The Palestinians have been gripped by unparalleled fiscal and political crisis since Islamic militant group Hamas took office last March following a massive electoral victory over the once dominant Fatah.
Haniyeh says his Hamas-led government will not recognize Israel and has problems with a widely touted Arab peace plan because it does. International assistance to the Palestinians has dried up because the militant Hamas movement will not recognize Israel and renounce violence.
Haniyeh, addressing an “iftar” feast at the end of a day of Ramadan fasting, said Hamas and the government “will not recognize or normalize” relations with Israel.
He also said the main problem with the Arab peace plan, presented in 2002 by Saudi Arabia and endorsed by an Arab summit, is that it recognizes Israel in exchange for an Israeli pullout from the West Bank, Gaza Strip, east Jerusalem and Golan Heights. Haniyeh said he still hopes for a unity government with Fatah.
After Hamas refused to recognize Israel, renounce violence or abide by past peace agreements, the West suspended direct aid, sending the economy into freefall and seeing no civil servants receive full salaries for six months. Stalemate in talks on forming a unity government acceptable to the West has persisted as spiraling inter-faction tensions spilled over into deadly clashes that have left at least 12 people dead over the past week.
Meanwhile, one Palestinian civilian was killed and three others were wounded yesterday during an Israeli airstrike in the northern of the Gaza Strip, witnesses and medical sources said. Medical sources identified the killed civilian as Mahmoud Abu Nasser 14-year-old. The sources at Al-Awda hospital in Gaza Strip said that Abu Naser’s father was among the wounded and identified as Jamal Abu Nasser 40, in addition a 68-year-old man is suffering serious wounds.
Witnesses said that an Israeli drone fired a missile toward a group of civilians where gathering near Hamouda petrol station eastern Biet Lahiya in the northern of the Gaza Strip resulted in killing one civilian and wounding three others. The Israeli Army said that its forces targeted a Palestinian operative who was trying to lift a Qassam rocket launcher that was used in the attack of Sderot on Saturday.
Israeli launched on offensive against the Gaza Strip after the three Palestinian militants groups including Hamas killed two soldiers and a third was seized in a cross-border raid in the southern of the Gaza Strip last June. Earlier, Israeli warplanes bombarded a house in the Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, witnesses said that an Israeli drone fired one missile at a house of Hamas movement activist after informing him minutes before the strike to leave the house.
The United States and Europe have insisted that any Palestinian government must accept three basic conditions before the West resumes its aid: recognition of Israel, renunciation of violence and acceptance of previous Israeli-Palestinian peace deals. Jordan’s foreign minister warned Sunday that Palestinians face “a humanitarian tragedy” unless peacemaking with Israel resumes quickly. “It is absolutely necessary to consolidate international efforts to provide assistance to the needy Palestinian people,” Abdul-Ilah Al-Khatib told visiting UN Mideast envoy Alvaro De Soto in Amman, the Jordanian capital.
