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Palestine 'not bound by summit'
26/11/2007 16:34 - (SA)
Gaza City - Hamas said on Monday that the Palestinians would not be bound by any decisions taken at a key US-hosted Middle East peace meeting that has further isolated the Islamists in their Gaza stronghold.
"The decisions taken at Annapolis are not binding on the Palestinian people, who have not authorised anyone, either Arab or Palestinian, to erase their rights," said Hamas spokesperson Fawzi Barhum.
The statement came a day before US President George W Bush convenes the peace conference in Annapolis outside Washington with the aim of jumpstarting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process after a seven-year freeze.
The Islamists, blacklisted by both the European Union and the United States as a terror group, were not invited to the meeting.
The group that routed president Mahmoud Abbas's long-dominant Fatah party in parliamentary polls in January 2006 argues that without its participation the president lacks a mandate to negotiate on behalf of all the Palestinian people.
Later on Monday, it convened a "counter-conference" to the US gathering, warning against any concessions to the Israelis.
Refusing recognition
"The Palestinian cause should not serve as a vehicle for Arabs and the international community to normalise their relations with the Israeli enemy," Barhum said.
And it reiterated its refusal to recognise the Jewish state or renounce its long-held tenets.
"We totally refuse to recognise the Zionist enemy, such recognition will never come," Ossama al-Muzaina, a senior Hamas official, told the gathering.
"We affirm that Palestine, from the river (Jordan) to the (Mediterranean) sea, belongs to the Palestinian people. Jerusalem, from east to west, is the capital of Palestine. Any solution that does not include the return of the Palestinian refugees and the freeing of prisoners is refused," he said.
Hamas has been increasingly isolated by Israel and the West after it seized control of the Gaza Strip in mid-June, overrunning forces loyal to the moderate Abbas.
It suffered a further blow last week when Arab foreign ministers voted to attend the US meeting despite its calls for a boycott.
Faced with the setback, Hamas urged Arab nations not to normalise relations with or make concessions to Israel during the US gathering.
Preventing attacks
The Islamists, who have not renounced violence or recognised Israel, have vowed to step up attacks on Israeli targets in Gaza and the occupied West Bank after the Annapolis meeting.
Amid such warnings, the Israeli police were placed on a state of high alert on Sunday through Wednesday "to prevent attacks aimed at torpedoing the Annapolis meeting", said police spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld.
In northern Gaza, Israeli fire killed three Palestinian militants in two separate incidents near the border with Israel, medics and the army said.
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