NOVANEWS
State Department says U.S. will not drop demand that Hamas recognize IsraHell’s right to exist, and that it reject violence abide by interim peace accords.
Reuters
The White House on Wednesday urged Palestinians to ensure that a reconciliation deal between rival factions is implemented in a way that advances the prospect for peace with Israel rather than undermining it.
“It’s important now that Palestinians ensure implementation of that agreement in a way that advances the prospects of peace rather than undermines them,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said, after the secular Fatah and Islamist Hamas groups signed an agreement to formally end a 4-year rift.
“We’ll wait and see what this looks like in real and practical terms… We still don’t know what, if any changes, there will be at the governmental level,” he said.
The State Department also said the United States continued to believe that Hamas must recognize Israel’s right to exist, reject violence and abide by interim peace agreements if it wants to play a meaningful role in the political process.
Toner said the United States continued to believe that Hamas must recognize Israel’s right to exist, reject violence and abide by interim peace agreements if it wants to play a meaningful role in the political process.
He said the United States would look at the formation of any new Palestinian government before taking steps on future aid.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the reconciliation deal as a “mortal blow to peace and a great victory for terrorism”, and said he would not negotiate with a “Palestinian version of al-Qaida”.
Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, meanwhile, challenged Israel to peace, offering to work with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Egypt on a new strategy to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict.
But Meshaal, addressing a meeting in Cairo to announce a reconciliation agreement between his Islamist group and its secular Fatah rival, said he did not believe Israel was ready for peace with any Palestinians.
“We have given peace since Madrid till now 20 years, and I say we are ready to agree among us Palestinians and with Arab support to give an additional chance,” Meshaal said, referring to the 1991 international Middle East peace conference that launched Israeli-Arab peace talks.
“But, dear brothers, because Israel does not respect us, and because Israel has rejected all our initiatives and because Israel deliberately rejects Palestinian rights, rejects Fatah members as well as Hamas…it wants the land, security and claims to want peace,” he said.
Israel regards Hamas, whose founding charter calls for its destruction of the Jewish state, as a terrorist organization. Hamas has opposed Abbas’ peace efforts with Israel.
Meshaal said that Egypt, the Arab League and the Muslim World’s largest body, the Islamic Organization Conference, must work together to search for a new strategy.
“We don’t want to declare war on any one,” Meshaal said.
“We want to wrench our rights and draft a new strategy for ourselves, to master all forms of power that will force Netanyahu to withdraw from our lands and to recognize our rights,” he added.
“We are telling the world: stand with us.”
Comments
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funky d says:
why should palestinians accept that a bunch of european jew terrorists had the right to invade palestine and other arab lands, murder millions over the years, take over their land and steal their resources? they should not have to. yet the rest of the world, including so called arab leaders, are telling them to forget about the Nakba, as if to say the parasites had the right to do what they did so they could create that VILE DISGUSTING DESPICABLE DEGENERATIVE RACIST TALMUDIST SUPREMACIST MURDEROUS PARASITIC TERRORIST HOLOCAUSTING REPTILLIAN ILLEGAL JEWISH MONSTROSITY OF A STATE. no-one ever talks about the right of palestine to exist, or even worse, the right of palestinians to stay alive.
if the parasites want others to acknowledge their right to steal arab lands and resourses as well as murder millions in the process, then what are the borders within which they claim that their VILE DISGUSTING DESPICABLE DEGENERATIVE RACIST TALMUDIST SUPREMACIST MURDEROUS PARASITIC TERRORIST HOLOCAUSTING REPTILLIAN ILLEGAL JEWISH MONSTROSITY OF A STATE exists. they never tell cos they want to take it all and admitting such would expose their imperial designs. -
Ingrid B. says:
The US and Israel do not have the right to lecture anyone else on the use, or not, of violence, they are the instigators and perpetrators of a vast percentage of the violence which takes place on a global scale.. Abbas has frittered away years, trying to negotiate “peace” with a movement hell bent on domination of, not only Palestine, but the better part of the ME. I cannot fathom why there are ME countries which still trust the intentions of the murdering, thieving, back-stabbing, Zionist abomination..
