HAMAS is studying the 20-point plan for Gaza which US President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu published on Monday evening.
Trump claimed yesterday that Hamas ‘will pay in Hell’ if it does not give a positive response to the plan within 3-4 days.
Islamic Jihad secretary-general Ziyad an-Nakhala called the plan ‘a formula for perpetuating the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people.’
He warned: ‘Israel seeks to impose, via US backing, what it failed to achieve through military means. Therefore, we regard the US-Israeli declaration as a recipe for igniting broader conflict in the region.’
Netanyahu issued a video in Israel yesterday, claiming: ‘Instead of Hamas isolating us, we turned the tables and isolated it. Now the entire world is pressuring Hamas to accept the conditions we set.
‘We will recover all our hostages, alive and well, while (the Israeli military) will remain in most of the Gaza Strip.’
The plan calls for sidelining the Palestinian Authority (PA) and establishing a new security force in Gaza, run by Trump, with war criminal and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair as his henchman.
Although the plan was welcomed by PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, senior Fatah official Abbas Zaki struck a sharply different tone in separate comments to local media, describing the US plan as a ‘document of surrender’ imposed on the Palestinians without their consent.
Zaki warned that accepting such proposals would ‘entrench humiliation, legitimise occupation, and fragment Palestinian unity,’ accusing Washington and Israel of plotting to ‘liquidate the Palestinian cause’.
Mustafa Barghouti, General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, also condemned the plan, saying: ‘Of course we all, probably including Hamas, want this war to stop, this genocide and war that has killed and injured more than 11% of the population of Gaza.
‘We want an exchange of prisoners because we also want to see our prisoners released. But also we want to stop this act of possible ethnic cleansing of Gaza. On the other hand, I think this plan, especially after the meeting of Mr Trump with Netanyahu, became totally biased to the Israeli side.
‘It has many, many serious problems and many mines in it that could explode. First of which, the plan completely ignores, they call it a peace plan, but there is nothing in it that would guarantee peace because it doesn’t talk about ending the occupation.’
He continued: ‘It doesn’t say that the Israeli army will fully withdraw from Gaza. It says that it will keep a buffer zone, which is no less than 25% of the land of the Gaza Strip, which is a very small area that is no more than 140 square miles, with no less than 2.2 million people.’
He continued: ‘Who is going to guarantee secure? Is it the American side, or the Israeli side? And by which law do they want to bring in a foreign government to rule us? Why should they bring back British colonialism to Gaza? We struggled very hard to get rid of it. We struggled very hard for 100 years to be independent.
‘And now bringing in a foreign body to rule us and to separate Gaza from the West Bank, which would undermine any potential or possibility for a Palestinian state.’
‘And for how long? We already are now 30 years and not a single thing was implemented. And not only that, everything that was agreed was blown up by Israel. We’re used to that. Yes, we want this war to stop as soon as possible because we are the ones that are bleeding, but we cannot be sold something that is deceiving us and claim it’s a plan for peace.’
He was asked: ‘Won’t Hamas be blamed by Palestinians who are suffering in Gaza if they don’t agree to this?’
Barghouti replied: ‘Palestinians will blame Israel always for the crimes it has committed which took the lives of 65,000 people, including 25,000 children. That’s where the blame should go.’
