GAZA CITY, 26 November 2006 — Hamas warned Israel yesterday that it would launch the third uprising if no progress was made in peace talk toward a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders.
Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal gave Western powers six months to seize on “the historic chance” to settle the region’s longest conflict once a national unity Cabinet is formed composed of Hamas and rival group Fatah.
Shortly before Meshaal’s ultimatum delivered at a news conference in Cairo, Palestinian fighters fired rockets into Israel, residents said. Israeli artillery shells later hit a house and a car in the northern Gaza Strip, wounding at least two people, hospital officials said.
Israeli forces also killed a Palestinian fighter in the strip yesterday, and in a separate incident overnight, they shot dead an unidentified Palestinian while he was approaching the strategic Karni border crossing.
“We give them six months and the real political horizon will open up,” said Meshaal, in Cairo to discuss efforts to form the unity government and a possible prisoner exchange with Israel.
If progress is not made, Meshaal said, the Palestinian Authority could collapse and “the Palestinian people will close all the political ledgers and come out in a third intifada (uprising) project and the struggle will be wide open.”
Palestinians began an uprising in 2000 in which they carried out frequent attacks inside Israel. There has been a sharp reduction in such strikes in the Jewish state since a cease-fire was declared in early 2005.
Meshaal gave few details of his negotiations in Cairo on a unity government, seen by Palestinians as a way to end the financial sanctions imposed after Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections in January.
— With input from agencies
