DAMASCUS, 6 January 2008 — Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal on Friday called for unconditional talks with the rival Fatah faction to halt violence between Palestinians but vowed to keep up the Islamist group’s armed struggle against Israel.
“I urge my brothers in Fatah to solve the Palestinian crisis and restore national unity through unconditional dialogue,” Meshaal said at a rally in the Syrian capital to mark the 20th anniversary of Hamas’ founding.
“We can manage the conflict with Israel together, without dropping the option of resistance.” The statement followed an offer last week by President Mahmoud Abbas, who leads Fatah, to hold reconciliation talks if Hamas ceded control of Gaza. Abbas also renewed his call for Hamas to agree to early elections.
The rift between the two groups widened after Hamas defeated Fatah in a 2006 poll. At least five Palestinians were killed and 50 wounded in clashes in the Gaza strip between Fatah and Hamas activists shortly after Abbas made his remarks.
Meshaal said the issue of early elections could be addressed at the proposed talks. He reiterated Hamas’ rejection of giving up its authority in Gaza. Meshaal said Hamas was forced to assert its authority in the strip in June to stop chaos he accused Fatah of fomenting. The takeover prompted Abbas to sack a Hamas-led government and appoint an administration loyal to him in the West Bank.
“The problem is not early elections. Come to an unconditional dialogue and we will be ready to discuss anything,” said Meshaal, who lives in exile in Syria along with other high-level Hamas officials.
On Monday, Abbas said he wanted to “open a new page” with Hamas if it gave up control of the Gaza Strip, which it took forcibly in mid-June last year from forces loyal to the secular Palestinian president.
The following day, senior Hamas official Mahmoud Zahar said the movement welcomed dialogue, but he adamantly rejected the conditions Abbas set for talks aimed at halting the factional struggle. “No Arab country has asked Hamas to give up on the current situation in Gaza,” Meshaal said, adding the government of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad should “go.”
“Our people must stop this government from selling off Palestinian interests,” he added of the administration that in effect governs in the West Bank only, and accused it of hounding Hamas members.
Meshaal denied there had been contacts between the Islamist movement and “the Zionists who are our enemies,” and said Hamas had turned down a European proposal for such a meeting to discuss ways of calming the situation.
“Gaza is starving and surrounded but it is still resisting,” Meshaal said. He called upon “Arab leaders to take a courageous decision in order to lift the embargo” on the impoverished territory.
Meanwhile, Israel expanded a massive military operation in the northern West Bank city of Nablus yesterday and placed the city center under curfew, Israeli and Palestinian officials said. “The 70,000 people who live in the city center and the neighborhoods around it have been placed under a curfew,” a Palestinian security official told AFP.
“At least four Palestinians have been wounded by rubber bullets on Saturday and 35 have been arrested since Thursday,” the official added. An Israeli Army spokesman confirmed that a curfew had been imposed, saying it was to protect civilians living in the crowded ancient quarter of the city. However, he said only 19 people had been arrested so far.
On Thursday, dozens of Israeli Army jeeps rolled in, aiming to arrest wanted militants in a city where the Palestinian Authority has recently deployed hundreds of forces as part of an ambitious security crackdown.
Meanwhile, thousands of Arab Israelis marched through the streets of Nazareth yesterday in protest against Israel’s sealing off of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, according to an AFP photographer. The crowds waved Palestinian flags, green banners and signs from the Arab Israeli Balad Party and two Islamist activist groups, which organized the demonstration.
