Hamas warned on Thursday that the summit held in Washington and the resumption of direct peace talks with the ‘Zionist enemy’ only serve the US-Israeli objective of ‘liquidating’ the Palestinian cause.
A Hamas official said in a statement that the movement rejects the negotiations ‘which are intended to be an impetus for the Obama administration prior to the Congressional elections, a smokescreen to cover Israel’s crimes, a complement on settlement plans and the Judaization of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa, and a tool to lift its international isolation and improve its image after the terrorist war crimes committed in its attack against the besieged Gaza Strip and the deadly assault on the Freedom Flotilla.’
The talks are ‘against national choice’ Hamas contended, adding that they take place amid ongoing settlement activity and deportations against Palestinians in Jerusalem and throughout the West Bank.
‘They only serve the criminal enemy and will not achieve our national goals,’ the official stated.
The spokesman added that Ramallah authority president Mahmud Abbas, West Bank government president Salam Fayyad, and the Oslo Group ‘represent themselves only, and do not speak on behalf of our people, our aspirations, our cause, or our national constants.’
Hamas believes that national unity based on the resistance programme and steadfastness ‘is the only way to preserve constants and recover national rights’.
With Palestinians in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank staging a sit-in to protest against the resumption of direct talks between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel, many oppose these negotiations saying they’re doomed to failure.
Jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouthi condemned the talks as destined to fail and said the Palestinians must instead focus on ending their deep national divide.
In written answers to questions from a news agency, Barghouthi said ‘the problem is not in the principle of negotiations, which we accept, but that without a popular foundation and action on the ground which supports negotiations, they will not reach any results.
‘The alternative is achieving national reconciliation and unity and in wider participation in popular resistance to the occupation,’ he said.
Barghouthi urged a wider boycott of Israeli-manufactured goods and said the Palestinians must mobilise international support to impose that sort of isolation on Israel.
He said Israel must commit to withdrawing from those territories and to cede the Palestinians sovereignty over East Jerusalem.
It must also agree to a resolution to the plight of Palestinian refugees in line with UN resolutions.
The Palestinians in Ramallah and Gaza have been staging protests against the direct talks decision, arguing that the United States has never been a true mediator for peace, while they seriously question Israel’s commitment to peace.
‘Israel must halt settlement expansions before we can go to start negotiations,’ Jameel al-Majdalawi, a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said.
Walid al-Walad from the Palestinian People’s Party demanded an immediate stop to direct negotiations.
‘Israel will exploit these talks, buy time and build more settlements, and make it impossible to have a Palestinian state’ he warned.
Lebanon resistance movement, Hezbollah, issued a statement on Wednesday that negotiations, direct or indirect, will achieve nothing for Palestinians.
Hezbollah commented on Hamas’ West Bank shooting in which four Israeli settlers were killed, saying this proves that the resistance is the only option.
Hezbollah condemned ‘international silence which is often supportive of the Zionist occupation.’
In occupied Palestine, Israeli forces shot a Palestinian in northern Gaza on Thursday, following earlier reports that Israeli patrols and bulldozers entered the area.
Taha Shedeh Taha, 18, was admitted to Kamal Edwan Hospital with gun shot wounds to his leg, medics said.
An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed that soldiers shot a Palestinian close to the border fence.
She said forces saw a group of people close to the border and fired warning shots, adding that the group continued to approach the fence and soldiers opened fire, injuring one Palestinian.
The IDF spokeswoman noted that Israel considers the area a combat zone.
Earlier on Thursday, locals said Israeli patrols and bulldozers entered Beit Hanoun and opened fire on farmers.
The soldiers entered through the Erez crossing, witnesses said, speculating that forces were in the area to rebuild the border fence which locals had destroyed weeks earlier.
Earlier in the west Bank, approximately fifty Israeli settlers attacked the home of a Palestinian family near the illegal Kiryat Arba settlement on Wednesday, reportedly in response to the killing of the four Israelis a day earlier.
One witness said that the settlers threw empty bottles and stones at the home of Younis Idrees, and then set fire to the grass outside the building.
Israeli forces were deployed at the scene and prevented further assaults.
Meanwhile, an army official revealed that an Israeli citizen was arrested near Hebron.
Locals reported an increase in tensions between residents and settlers in the area, afraid of revenge attacks following the shooting of the four settlers on the road near the settlement, for which Hamas claimed responsibility.
In Nablus, on Tuesday evening, Israeli settlers broke car windows and cut down olive trees, said Ghassan Doughlas, who heads the Palestinian Authority file on northern West Bank settlement activity.
The official said that several cars were vandalised along the Jet junction between Nablus and Qalqiliya.
Meanwhile, Hamas has strongly denounced what it described as ‘the frenzied arrest campaign’ being carried out by the Palestinian Authority’s security militias in the West Bank in search of the resistance fighters who carried out the Al-Khalil operation on Tuesday, describing it as a ‘national crime’.
In a press release, Hamas slammed these militias for hastening to arrest and summon hundreds of Palestinian citizens for the sake of Israeli settlers, instead of providing protection for the Palestinians against the settlers’ daily attacks, especially in Al-Khalil city, which has led to the killing of many Palestinians since the beginning of this year.
For its part, the popular resistance movement condemned the ‘ferocious attack’ waged by the PA’s security militias on the Palestinian resistance and called on the fighters to deal with these militias as traitors and never surrender to them.
In this context, the PA’s militias reportedly kidnapped more than 250 Palestinian citizens thought to be affiliated with Hamas in the wake of the Al-Khalil operation.
According to local witnesses, on Wednesday the militias carried out indiscriminate raids on hundreds of homes belonging to senior Hamas officials and figures and kidnapped dozens of them.
They also summoned hundreds of Palestinians who were not at home during the raids, including women, in Salfit and Qalqiliya cities.
Many worshippers were also kidnapped from mosques, especially after finishing dawn prayers.
Local residents told the Hamas news agency, the Palestinian Information Centre (PIC), that the militias are still carrying out raids on homes and kidnapping dozens of Palestinians.
They added that the number of Palestinian citizens seized in Tulkarem city alone amounts to more than 50.
Israeli military radio said on Wednesday that a joint committee of the PA’s security apparatuses and the Israeli army was formed to study all data and information collected from Palestinians detained following the Al-Khalil operation, claiming that this information could lead to the arrest of the perpetrators.
In a separate incident, the PIC was told that militia men from the PA’s intelligence apparatus kidnapped journalist Mamdouh Hamamra, who works as a reporter for Al-Quds satellite channel, after a raid on his home in Bethlehem city, without knowing the reason for his detention.
