GAZA CITY/RAMALLAH, 11 July 2007 — Hamas said it would boycott a Palestinian Parliament session called by President Mahmoud Abbas for today, a tactical move that could consolidate the leader’s power over the sidelined chamber. “We will boycott this session that we consider illegal,” the chief of Hamas’ parliamentary bloc, Salah Al-Bardawil, said in Gaza.
Senior Fatah MP Azzam Al-Ahmed said last week that if Parliament does not meet, Abbas would invoke “Article 43 of the basic law.”
That provision gives the president “the right in exceptional cases ... and while the Legislative Council is not in session, to issue decisions and decrees that have the power of law.” Abbas could therefore prolong the mandate of his emergency government, sworn in for one month on June 17, after he dismissed the previous Hamas-run Cabinet.
Abbas yesterday called for an international force in the Gaza Strip. “We have insisted on the necessity of deploying an international force in the Gaza Strip to guarantee the delivery of humanitarian aid and to allow citizens to enter and leave freely,” Abbas said at a joint news conference in Ramallah after talks with visiting Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi.
Abbas noted the estimated 4,000 Palestinians who have been blocked at the Rafah crossing terminal on the Egyptian border, shut for nearly a month since the Hamas takeover, 11 of whom are reported to have died in the deteriorating humanitarian conditions.
Meanwhile, activists of the leftist Israeli group Peace Now yesterday hung dozens of Israeli and Syrian flags along the road leading from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, following Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s statement that he would be willing to engage in direct negotiations with Damascus.
“We wanted to convey the message that the (Israeli) public wants the government must prevent the next war and try to reach an agreement with Syria,” said Peace Now director Yariv Oppenheimer.
“In the past few months Syria has been indicating that it is willing to negotiate, and the alternative to this would be war.” The initiative was part of the group’s “Talk to Syria Now” campaign.
Peace Now plans to hold a rally on Thursday, the first anniversary of the July war on Lebanon, in which it will call for the resumption of talks with Syria.
In an interview with Al-Arabiya on Monday evening Olmert said, “Bashar Assad, I am willing to conduct direct peace negotiations with you, but you continuously say that you would be willing to hold talks only through the Americans.”
