GAZA CITY, 6 July 2005 — The Islamist movement Hamas was at loggerheads with the Palestinian Authority yesterday after shunning an offer to join a unity government, and vowed to resist any bid to disarm its members.
Khaled Meshaal, the Damascus-based overall leader of Hamas, told the leader of the dominant Fatah faction that he expected legislative elections to be organized swiftly, as he confirmed a decision not to join the government.
“We will not participate in this government for it is not the right mechanism,” Meshaal told reporters in the Syrian capital after meeting Farouk Qaddoumi. “We must rapidly rebuild the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) and organize legislative elections,” he added.
Hamas has indicated its willingness to join the PLO, an umbrella movement of Palestinian factions is headed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
However, not only has Hamas shut the door on joining forces in government but it also made clear that it will resist any attempt by Abbas’ regime to disarm it.
Hamas has been behind the majority of anti-Israeli attacks during the nearly five-year Palestinian uprising. “We will not allow anyone to disarm us,” Mahmoud Zahar, Hamas leader in its Gaza stronghold, said in an interview with Palestinian news agency Ramattan.
“Hamas will not remain with its arms folded in Gaza if the West Bank is attacked,” he added, warning that militants would not hesitate to retaliate against any future Israeli attacks in the occupied territory.
“Our national cause is not connected to the West Bank, Gaza or even Jerusalem. Our cause in Hamas is Palestine, the whole of Palestine.”
While Abbas has so far resisted Israeli pressure to disarm factions such as Hamas, he has repeatedly called for an end to the armed uprising. Zahar also heavily criticized the Palestinian Authority and Abbas for apparently refusing to involve Hamas in preparations for next month’s Israeli pullout from Gaza and for delaying parliamentary elections scheduled for July.
Abbas himself is due in Damascus later this week for talks with exiled faction leaders such as Meshaal. “After this experience, the confidence is no longer there,” Zahar said. The Palestinian Authority and Fatah “should know that they’re playing a dangerous game” for not coordinating the withdrawal with other factions, Zahar said.
“The land was liberated by resistance, not by negotiations, and we will not allow anyone to steal the achievements of the Palestinian people,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Israeli Army demolished 17 sheds and homes in a Palestinian hamlet in the northern West Bank yesterday, witnesses and security sources said. The buildings, which housed peasant farmers and shepherds, were razed by army bulldozers in Khirbet, east of the city of Nablus.
Residents said they had recently received notice that the buildings, which are situated close to the Jewish settlement of Mekhora, were to be destroyed as they had been constructed “within a military zone.”
In another development, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said yesterday the army and police were ready to implement Israel’s Gaza Strip pullout, insisting that extremist violence against the plan was totally unacceptable.
“The army and police will present their preparedness and I tell you, they are ready,” he told a group of MPs at a meeting called to discuss the state of readiness for next month’s operation.
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz confirmed plans to call up 17 battalions of reservists, with 43,000 police and soldiers due to be enlisted in the mass evacuation plan. “I want to say for the thousandth time, the disengagement will take place on the dates set by the government and the parliament ... In the middle of next month, Israel will start leaving Gaza and the northern West Bank,” Sharon said.
Sharon said that while the army would respond to any attacks by Palestinian s, it would not delay the evacuation. “When I say that the evacuation will not take place under (Palestinian) fire, this does mean that it will be halted,” he said.
Mofaz, unveiling details for the 17 battalions, predicted the operation to pull all the settlers out of Gaza and four small West Bank settlements would take “no more than four weeks” and hopefully would be quicker than that. “The army will remain for several weeks afterwards to complete the evacuation of its bases and complete its redeployment in Israel,” he added.
Jewish extremists opposed to the plan to uproot more than 8,000 settlers have waged an increasingly nasty campaign of sabotage and violence against the operation, including the attempted lynching of a Palestinian teenager.
