Hamas rejects Arab League peace initiative
The Palestinian Hamas movement has rejected a revised Middle East
peace initiative put forward by the Arab League, saying outsiders can
not decide the fate of the Palestinians.
In meetings this week in Washington, Arab states appeared to soften their 2002 peace plan, acknowledging that Israelis and Palestinians may have to swap land in any eventual peace deal.The United States and the Palestinian leadership in the occupied West Bank praised the move. But speaking to hundreds of worshippers in a mosque in the Gaza Strip on Friday, senior Hamas official Ismail Haniyeh said it was a concession that other Arabs were not authorised to make.
"The so-called new Arab initiative is rejected by our people, by our nation and no one can accept it," Haniyeh, prime minister of the Hamas government in the coastal enclave, said.
"The initiative contains numerous dangers to our people in the occupied land of 1967, 1948 and to our people in exile."
He was referring to the partition of British-mandate Palestine in 1948 when the United Nations voted to divide the territory into a Jewish state and an Arab state, and to the 1967 war when Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.[aljazeera]
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