GAZA CITY, 29 March 2005 — Hamas is ready to join the Palestine Liberation Organization, which groups together all the major Palestinian factions, one of its main leaders said yesterday.
“Our decision to participate in the PLO is not new. It is a long-standing and clear decision,” Mahmud Zahar told reporters after talks with Palestinian leader and PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in Gaza City.
Disagreements over the PLO charter and the size of Hamas’s representation in the council had delayed its incorporation. Progress, however, was made on these matters during inter-Palestinian talks that took place in Cairo in the middle of March, Zahar said.
“A committee grouping the general secretaries (of the Palestinian factions) was set up to look at this issue and the results have opened the way to the entry of Hamas and other factions into the PLO,” he said.
Zahar said that Hamas’s entry did not mean that it has renounced its commitment to a Palestine incorporating modern-day Israel.
The PLO charter calls for the creation of a Palestinian state only in land conquered by Israel in 1967.
“We are renouncing not one iota of Palestinian land but we can reach a temporary compromise with other factions,” he said.
Fatah is the largest movement in the PLO, which represents Palestinians living in the occupied territories as well as the diaspora.
The PLO controls the Palestinian Authority set up by the 1993 Oslo accords. Abbas succeeded veteran Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat both as head of the PLO and president of the PA following his death in November.
At a meeting late on Sunday, Abbas agreed to Islamic Jihad members taking part in a meeting of the PLO executive this week to help cement the March 17 truce, Islamic Jihad leader Mohammed Al-Hindi said.
Al Hindi said both his group and Hamas would attend the PLO session “to discuss a basis on which the PLO should be rebuilt” and said the PLO would consider a bid to let them join the organization.
Abbas told reporters after the Gaza meeting that he was seeking to further “national unity and calm” with the militants.
“It is necessary to follow up these issues with them so that we can push forward calm and the political process,” or peace talks with Israel, Abbas said.
Hamas, whose prominent role in a 4-1/2-year uprising against Israel has enhanced its popularity, has announced plans to run in a parliamentary poll in July after boycotting the first such elections in 1996. Islamic Jihad has not yet decided whether to stand.
