Ezzet Al-Resheq, political bureau member of the Hamas Movement, on Monday castigated Palestinian National Authority (PNA) president Mahmud Abbas for insisting on meeting with Israeli premier Ehud Olmert.
Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniya said: ‘This meeting cannot produce any political results.
‘It is reproducing a long path that has led the Palestinian people to nowhere.’
Resheq said that such meetings fell in line with the conspiracy against Hamas and the Palestine cause.
Resheq, in a press statement, doubted the importance of Abbas-Olmert meeting in Jericho, the first in a PNA-controlled city, charging that it posed as a new strand in the series of conspiracies against the Palestinian cause.
He said that the meeting was the result of US-Israeli pressures to crystallise something regarding the settlement process.
However, Resheq did not expect anything concrete to emerge from such meetings ‘because Abbas has completely bowed to the Zionist speculation that refuses any discussion of the final status of crucial issues,’ said Hamas.
Resheq also stressed that isolating Hamas was one of the prime targets of such meetings.
‘We do not expect anything new from those meetings, rather we believe that they target conspiring against resistance and the Palestinian people’s legitimate rights,’ he concluded.
For his part, Hamas MP Dr. Yousef Al-Sharafi affirmed in Gaza that the Abbas-Olmert meeting would end up in failure.
He accused Abbas of surrendering the interest of his own people and of keenness on the occupation’s interests.
He also recalled that 14 years of negotiations with the occupation authorities did not bring anything of benefit to the Palestinians; rather it met the occupation’s demands.
Meanwhile, Dr. Aziz Dwaik, the detained Palestine Legislative Council (PLC) speaker, also on Monday warned of a plot aimed at liquidating the Palestine cause in accordance with the Israeli occupation’s agenda.
Dwaik, who was speaking to the lawyer of the Nafha Society catering for prisoners’ affairs in Megiddo jail, said that the current events in the Palestinian arena reflect ‘a clear theatrical play aimed at endorsing dictatorship and division among the Palestinian people’.
The PLC speaker, who had been detained for one full year on Sunday in occupation jails, also charged the international community with bias in favour of the Jewish state.
He said that the world keeps on asking the Palestinians to respect and abide by international laws, conventions and treaties while Israel was violating them on daily basis with no one checking it.
For its part, the Nafha Society asked all free parliamentarians of the world to work for the release of Dr. Dwaik and all his kidnapped colleagues and PNA ministers, wondering about the world-sanctioned immunity for all representatives of the people in the case of those abducted lawmakers.
In their talks on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert and Palestinian president Abbas discussed steps towards creating a Palestinian state.
But after three hours of talks in a casino of an hotel in the West Bank town of Jericho, the two sides remained at odds over how to proceed ahead of an autumn conference aimed at jumpstarting their stalled peace talks.
Olmert said at the start of the talks: ‘I came here in order to discuss with you the fundamental issues outstanding between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, hoping this will lead us soon to negotiations about the creation of a Palestinian state.’
A spokesman quoted him as saying ‘it is our intention to bring out a two state solution’, adding that ‘we want to achieve that as soon as possible.’
The encounter marked the first such high-level meeting in occupied Palestinian territory in seven years.
Security was extremely tight as the leaders huddled trying to search for common ground ahead of the conference called for by US President Bush this autumn.
While the Palestinians had been pushing for the discussions to focus on ‘core issues’ such as Jerusalem, borders and refugees, Israel said it is too early to tackle the topics.
Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat told reporters afterwards that Abbas and Olmert had held a ‘deep and serious’ meeting.
The focus, he added, had been on the ‘fundamental issues of the peace process’ and ‘the means of quickly arriving at the creation of a Palestinian state’.
But exposing the differences between the two camps, Erekat said: ‘Personally, I think the negotiations have been totally exhausted. Now the leaders should decide.’
He said: ‘We have no need to reinvent the wheel. Any peace process should aim at ending the Israeli occupation that started in 1967.’
Palestinian officials have been pushing for a deal on the ‘core issues’ ahead of the autumn ‘peace conference’, with a view to implementing the agreement during the meeting.
Israeli officials have ruled out discussing the key issues before the conference, saying the two camps should create a basis or framework for an agreement before the meeting.
Erakat said the two leaders agreed to meet at least three more times ahead of the ‘peace conference’, which Israeli officials expect to take place in November after the Jewish and Muslim high holidays.
Monday’s meeting came less than a week after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met separately with the two leaders during her latest visit to the region.
Washington is keen to capitalise on a thawing of relations between Abbas and the Israelis in the wake of the Gaza takeover by Hamas.
Along with Israel, it has sought to boost the ‘moderate’ Palestinian president in his standoff with Hamas.
Towards that end, Israel has released part of Palestinian custom duties that it has withheld following Hamas’ election victory last year, offered an amnesty to West Bank militants who put down their arms, and released 256 Palestinian prisoners.
Abbas asked Olmert to release more detainees during Monday’s meeting, with the Israeli leader promising to consider the request, Erakat said.
More than 11,000 Palestinian prisoners are currently held in detention by the Jewish state.
Olmert said that Israel was in the ‘final stages’ of deciding to remove some of the more than 500 roadblocks and checkpoints that dot the West Bank, impeding the freedom of movement of its two-million-plus Palestinian population and feeding resentment.
Erakat said that the Israelis had said the decision on the checkpoints and barriers would come next week.
