DAMASCUS, 16 September 2003 — The European Union committed a “big mistake” by blacklisting Hamas as a terrorist organization, but the move won’t affect the group’s resistance operations, a senior leader of the Palestinian militant group said. Khaled Meshaal, head of Hamas’ Damascus-based political bureau, said as the group’s resources came from Arabs and Muslims, the EU ban would not affect Hamas’ struggle against Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.
“Europe has made a big mistake by taking this decision,” Meshaal told The Associated Press on Sunday. It was “an aggression against the Palestinian people, rather than Hamas. It is a kind of compliance with Israel and submission to American pressures.”
The European Union has added the entire Hamas organization to its terrorist list, but stopped short of a US-like crackdown on related charities that allegedly funnel money to the group. The list had included only Hamas’ military wing.
Meanwhile, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shara held talks Sunday on the worsening Middle East crisis, but neither side wanted to take credit for making such a rare, high-level telephone call.
The Syrians say it was Arafat who made what was the first such call in years to a top Syrian official, but the Palestinians reckon it was the other way around. While both are avowed foes of Israel, relations between Syria and the Palestinians have been chilly since 1983, when Arafat fell out with Syria’s late President, Hafez Assad, and was effectively expelled from Damascus.
Arafat’s last official visit to Damascus was in September 1993, shortly before cutting a framework peace deal with Israel that enraged Syria. He also went to Syria to offer condolences on the death of Hafez Assad in June 2000.
Meshaal, who called Arafat on Friday to convey Hamas’ condemnation of Israel’s move, said political differences between his group and the longtime Palestinian leader “does not mean we are in a state of Palestinian-Palestinian conflict.” Meshaal said he was in constant touch with his “brothers” inside the Palestinian areas and pledged to continue attacking Israelis as long as it continued assassinating Palestinian leaders.
Asked if he feared Israeli threats to assassinate Hamas leaders abroad, Meshaal said: “Of course, I expect (Israelis) to try assassinate me. But I am not afraid.” Meshaal survived a botched Israeli assassination attempt in Jordan in 1997.
The interview with Meshaal was conducted in the eastern Lebanese town of Chtoura near the Syrian-Lebanese border. Since Syria came under US pressure to close down the offices of Damascus-based Palestinian organizations, militant leaders have been traveling to neighboring Lebanon for media interviews.
Syria has been under US pressure to close down the offices of Damascus-based Palestinian organizations. Meshaal said no mediations were under way to convince Hamas, which has been responsible for scores of bombings in Israel, to discuss another truce with the Jewish state. Hamas recently ended a two-month truce with Israel after Israeli forces assassinated a Hamas leader in Gaza.
Meanwhile, Jordan’s King Abdallah said yesterday that both Israel and the Palestinian Authority deserve blame for the continuing violence in the Middle East. Abdallah said his talks later this week with President George W. Bush at Camp David will focus on ways to bring peace to the troubled region.
“There’s not enough pressure being put on both sides to adhere to what was expected,” Abdullah said on NBC’s “Today” in Washington. “The Israelis and the Palestinians should be held more accountable.” Abdallah said Arafat “should have been more supportive” of former Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, who recently resigned. He also said that Arafat should have backed the so-called “road map,” the US-supported peace proposal that would require the Palestinians to stop terrorist attacks against Israel as the beginning of a process leading to an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
