GAZA CITY, 28 January 2006 — A day after its sweeping victory in Palestinian legislative elections, pressure mounted on Hamas to renounce violence and accept the existence of archfoe Israel. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he would soon ask Hamas to form the next government. Supporters of his Fatah party fought a gunbattle with Hamas activists.
Leaders of Arab and Islamic countries urged Hamas to talk peace with Israel and called on the West to accept the Hamas poll win. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, in a call to Abbas, urged Fatah and Hamas to work together for peace and an independent state.
Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa called on the new government to affirm its commitment to an Arab peace proposal made in 2002. It offered peace with Israel in exchange for the Jewish state withdrawing to territory it held before the 1967 Middle East war. Speaking in Davos, Switzerland, he also cautioned Israel against using the Hamas victory as a pretext for halting the peace process.
King Abdallah of Jordan called for a “rapid return” to Middle East peace talks.
Turkey offered to act as an intermediary between Israel and the Palestinians. The 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference also “may perhaps take on an important role,” Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in Davos.
He called on Hamas to recognize Israel, hand over its weapons to the Palestinian security forces and move away from extremism toward a middle ground. And he called on Israel to accept both the election results and Hamas’ role in the new government.
Malaysia’s prime minister urged the international community to accept the outcome of the elections and said he was confident Hamas would work toward peace. Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said the elections were conducted in the true spirit of democracy and the results reflected the wishes of the Palestinian people.
The West threatened to use economic aid as a means to force Hamas to talk peace while an exiled leader of the Palestinian resistance group rejected disarmament.
A senior US diplomat in Jerusalem said the United States would halt its aid to Palestinians should a Hamas-led government come to power and not renounce violence. Jacob Walles, the US consul-general in Jerusalem, said the US would not deliver assistance to “a terror organization, members of a terror organization or ministries controlled by a terror organization.”
The US gave the Palestinian Authority $400 million in direct aid last year and several million more through UN charities, Walles said. “I don’t see how we would do that if those ministries were controlled by Hamas,” he said. The British government suggested its continued assistance for the Palestinian Authority depended on whether Hamas made the “right choice” between democracy and violence. A spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair said there would have to be an assessment of whether to continue Britain’s key role in helping the authority manage the transition to fully-fledged government following Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said in Damascus that the internationally sponsored road map for Middle East peace was “unacceptable,” and that talk of forming a coalition with Fatah was “premature.”
Hamas and Fatah gunmen exchanged fire in the Gaza Strip. Three people were wounded in the clash near Khan Younis. Later, thousands of Fatah members burned cars and shot in the air in demonstrations demanding the resignation of corrupt party officials and insisting that Fatah form no coalition with Hamas.
— Additional input from agencies
