GAZA: Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal ended his first visit to the Gaza Strip yesterday 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 angered Israel with vows to never recognise the Jewish state and to seek to “free the land of Palestine inch by inch”. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday accused Europe, the United Nations and Abbas of reacting to calls by Hamas for the destruction of Israel with “deafening silence”.
In brief remarks before crossing back to Egypt from Gaza, Meshaal sidestepped the conflict with Israel, and focused on internal Palestinian feuds.
“I entered Gaza carrying a great love for it and I exit with a greater love in my heart,” said the 56-year-old Hamas leader, who lives in exile.
“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 most Palestinians say they want.
Aside from their quarrel over Gaza, the two Palestinian factions are also divided over Abbas’ peacemaking efforts with Israel, which Hamas opposes.
Both parties hope to boost ties on the heels of an eight-day war between Hamas and Israel last month that ended with a truce, and a Fatah-led initiative at the United Nations General Assembly recognising Palestinian statehood.
Meshaal became Hamas’ 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’ 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 on 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, with sizeable Arab populations. Reuters
