GAZA CITY, 18 January 2003 — A senior Hamas official said yesterday his group will not stop its suicide attacks in Israel, ahead of inter-Palestinian talks in Cairo which he said will start Jan. 22. “Hamas officially informed Egypt of its final answer: our position is against ending the resistance and abiding by a one-year truce,” Abdelaziz Rantissi told reporters, stressing “operations inside Israel will continue.”
He was referring to a truce plan which the Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam said was put forward by Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Soleiman and had the approval of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. The proposal was for a halt to Palestinian attacks inside Israel for a year in exchange for an end to Israel’s targeted killings of Palestinian activists, Al-Ayyam said.
But the Egyptian government daily Al-Ahram said this was “not quite correct.” Rantissi said “it has been decided that the inter-Palestinian dialogue would resume in Cairo on Jan. 22 and we will attend.”
“We believe the talks will lead to positive results because this time all Palestinian factions have been invited by Egypt to attend and will confirm the right of our people to resist,” he said without giving any further details.
The Cairo consultations, which started last fall under the auspices of Egypt and the European Union, were aimed at forging a common Palestinian position on how to pursue the more than two-year-old uprising against Israeli occupation.
Senior Fatah official Zacharia Al-Agha, who will attend the upcoming session in Cairo, confirmed that a new round of talks would start on Jan. 22 and said all Palestinian groups would be there. “The goal is to produce a document on which we all agree and with which we comply, dealing with the political situation, the forms resistance should take against Israeli occupation, as well as the domestic situation including the participation of all factions in decision-making,” he told AFP.
Arafat’s top adviser Nabil Abu Rudeina described the meeting as “an important milestone,” although he said it would be “a difficult” meeting and urged the parties “to act responsibly.” Palestine Liberation Organization No. 2 Mahmud Abbas is to head the Fatah delegation in Cairo, while Rantissi said Hamas would be represented by its Damascus-based political bureau chief Khaled Meshaal, as was the case in previous talks last December.
President Hosni Mubarak on Wednesday said Egypt had made progress in persuading radical Palestinian groups to suspend their attacks on Israelis.
“We are working to establish a new climate which would allow negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians to resume,” he said, while accusing the hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of not wanting that.
Hamas, meanwhile, launched a seaborne raid off the Gaza Strip yesterday. The Israeli military said one its warships blew up an explosives-laden raft off the coast of the Gaza Strip Jewish settlement of Dugit. The military said the raft was unmanned and nobody was killed or wounded.
The Israeli Army has stepped up arrests of suspected Palestinian activists in the West Bank ahead of Israel’s general election, military sources said yesterday. The army did not say why the number of arrests had increased but many Israelis fear Palestinians could try to disrupt the Jan. 28 election with attacks.
The army has rounded up scores of people in the past three days and has made about 30 arrests each day since Tuesday, one of the sources said. (Agencies)