Ahead of next week’s meeting with Prime Minister Olmert, PA President Mahmoud Abbas said there would be no talks with Hamas and called the group “murderous terrorists,” it was the strongest language yet used by the Palestinian President about the Islamist group that seized power in Gaza last week.
Abbas accused Hamas of supplanting the Palestinian’s “national project” with a “project of darkness” and of trying to set up a separate state in Gaza.
Palestinian President Abbas speaking today (AFP/Al Jazeera)
“It’s a fight between the national project and this small kingdom they want to establish in Gaza, the kingdom of Gaza, between those who are using assassination and killing to achieve their goals, and those who are using the rules of law,” he said Wednesday in a televised address from the Palestinian capital in Ramallah.
The move severely undercut efforts by Hamas and by factions of Fatah to move toward re-establishing dialogue and appeared to support observers who have argued that Hamas’s takeover of Gaza is moving the Palestinians at least temporarily toward two governments, a Fatah-controlled government in the West Bank with which the West and Israel are willing to work, and a Hamas-controlled Gaza that appears increasingly to be cut off from the rest of the world accept for humanitarian emergency assistance.
Fatah appeared unified today, in contrast to the last week where it appeared paralyzed and rent with internal divisions. President Abbas said he intended to convene the Palestine Liberation Organization’s central body and the Palestinian Central Council, the 129-member Fatah dominated central body of the Palestinian government. There were no signs of opposition from within Fatah as legislators openly stated that both meetings were intended to “topple” Hamas. Legislators will reportedly debate moving up the scheduled date for new legislative elections. The convening of legislative bodies is seen as highly important for Abbas, whose Emergency Decree is technically extralegal. Unlike Yasser Arafat, Abbas lacks the political power or the personal stature to rule outside of some institutional control of an extended period of time.
Hamas countered with renewed calls for a unity government, with Abu Marzouk, the deputy of Hamas’s Damascus-based Political Bureau, calling for a “government of technocrats” without political allegiances. It was a marked retreat from earlier calls for renewed negotiations between the two parties. Many observers believed that Hamas initially thought that the balance of power in the Occupied Territories had shifted to favor the Islamist organization and would support Hamas gains in negotiations. Marzouk said it was Abbas, and not Hamas, that was attempting to create two Palestinian states.
Abbas also reiterated his banning of Hamas.
