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Hamas chief ends Gaza visit with call for Palestinian unity
Palestinian students hold the hand of Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal (2nd R) during his visit to the Islamic University in Gaza City December 9, 2012.
Credit: Reuters/Suhaib Salem
GAZA |
GAZA (Reuters) - Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal ended his first visit to the Gaza Strip on Monday with a pledge his Islamist movement would strive to heal political rifts with Palestinian rivals who hold sway in the occupied West Bank.
His comments reinforced promises he and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the rival Fatah movement, made to each other in a telephone conversation a month ago, to forge ahead with a stalled unity deal opposed by Israel.
During his four-day stay in Gaza, Meshaal had further angered Israel with vows to never recognize the Jewish state and seek to "free the land of Palestine inch by inch", which Israel said it saw as vindicating its reluctance to yield occupied land for peace.
But in brief remarks before crossing back to Egypt from Gaza, Meshaal focused on internal Palestinian feuds.
"I entered Gaza carrying a great love for it and I exit with a greater love in my heart," the 56-year-old Hamas leader, who lives in exile, said.
"From Gaza I have stressed the need for reconciliation, and I do so again. Gaza and the West Bank are two dear parts of the greater Palestinian homeland, and they need each other."
Hamas has ruled the tiny Gaza Strip and its 1.7 million population since 2007, when it won a brief civil war with its secular rivals Fatah, which still controls the occupied West Bank. Israel had pulled troops and settlers out of Gaza in 2005.
The two main Palestinian factions have tried, often with little enthusiasm, to patch up their differences. Meshaal has vowed to push for the unity which is longed for by ordinary Palestinians.
IMPROVING TIES AFTER GAZA WAR
Aside from their quarrel over Gaza, the two Palestinian factions are also divided over Abbas' peacemaking efforts with Israel, which Hamas opposes. But the talks with Israel have been frozen for two years, making it easier to sidestep that issue in order to reconcile.
Both parties also now hope to boost ties on the heels of an eight-day war with Israel last month that ended with a truce Hamas saw as a victory, and a Fatah-led initiative at the United Nations General Assembly, recognizing Palestinian statehood.
Meshaal became Hamas's chief leader in 2004 after Israel assassinated the group's co-founders Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi. He himself had survived a 1997 Israeli assassination attempt in Jordan.
Hamas's 1988 founding charter calls for the destruction of Israel and creation of a state in all of the area once covered by a British mandate to rule Palestine, before the creation of Israel in 1948.
Some Hamas leaders have suggested they would back a long-term truce with Israel along with the creation of a Palestinian state in land Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
Meshaal, though, took a hardline approach in his Gaza visit.
"Today is Gaza. Tomorrow will be Ramallah and after that Jerusalem then Haifa and Jaffa," he told a rally on Saturday. Ramallah is in the West Bank, while Haifa and Jaffa are a part of Israel, though with sizeable Arab populations.
On Sunday he said at the Gaza Islamic University, "we do not accept the two-state solution," or Palestinian statehood alongside Israel.
Any push for Palestinian reconciliation would likely further anger Israel, already incensed at Meshaal's combative statements in Gaza.
Netanyahu said on Sunday Meshaal's statements in Gaza and Abbas' lack of condemnation, showed the Palestinians "have no intention of compromising with us. They want to destroy our country."
(Reporting by Nidal Almughrabi; Editing by Myra MacDonald)
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This is the proudly declared position of Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal.
And not a single member country of the EU has the simple moral courage to respond and go on record as to what they think of Meshaal’s stated position vis a vis the State of Israel.
The deafening silence emmanating from the EU community regarding Meshaal’s “victory” visit to Gaza speaks volumes.
Yes, that is the far easier path for the EU than dealing with a plethora of inconvenient realities. Realities that the State of Israel has had to contend with since 28 November 1947, when the UN offered to give give the Arabs fully one half of the land in British Mandate Palestine on which to build a state- an offer totally rejected by the Arabs who insisted they must have All the land.
Nothing has ever changed in the mindset of the Arabs as all sane people who are not afraid to face the hard facts of reality know.
But let the world continue the half century old charade of pretending the Arabs have ever abandoned their goal “to push the Jews into the sea”.
By all means, lets make East Jerusalem an Arab capitol !! Then the rocket launchers will not need to waste fuel firing their rockets from Gaza. All they will need to do is carry them a few yards by hand and detonate them in the center of Jerusalem.
In 1977, the Palestinian Arab leader, one of the founders of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), Zakhir Mukhsein, said in the interview to the Dutch newspaer “Trouw” ( this newspaper exists today, http://www.trouw.nl/ ) the folowing.
“(The) Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of the Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against Israel, in order to unite the Arab people.
“In fact, there is no difference today between Lebanese, Syrians and Jordanians, for political and tactical reasons, we are talking about the Palestinian people, since Arab national interests require the creation of a “Palestinian people” to continue the struggle against Zionism. Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined boundaries can not present the claims on Haifa and Jaffa, while the “Palestinians” can claim Haifa and Jaffa and Be’er Shevoy and Jerusalem.
“However, as soon as we restore our rights over all of Palestine, we will not wait a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.”
In 1993, almost immediately after signing agreements with Israel on the lawn of the White House, Yasser Arafat, in an interview to the Jordanian television said:
“Since we can not defeat Israel in open confrontation, we must defeat it in stages. We’ll take that piece of territory that we can take, we shall establish our sovereignty over it and use it as a springboard, to take a lot more. When the time comes, the Arab countries will join us to deal a fatal blow to Israel”.
“We plan to eliminate the state of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion… We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem.”
– Yasser Arafat, Leader of the PLO
“Peace for us means the destruction of Israel.”
– Yasser Arafat, Leader of the PLO, 1980
“Martyrs, martyrs, martyrs,… we want a million martyrs to march on Jerusalem.”
– Yasser Arafat, Leader of the PLO, 2002
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