News
Abbas dismisses Hamas gains, Mashaal vows further conflict
Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday said that Hamas had achieved nothing in agreeing a ceasefire with Israel beyond a truce deal Hamas itself rejected towards the start of Operation Protective Edge.
Israel and Hamas agreed an Egyptian-brokered open-ended Gaza ceasefire on Tuesday, which Hamas leaders have since sought to portray as a victory. However, under the ceasefire deal most of Hamas’s core demands have been deferred to further talks scheduled to take place within a month. These include construction of a sea and airport, opening of borders with Egypt and Israel, the release of prisoners, and payments of salaries to Hamas employees in the Gaza Strip.
Abbas said that this week’s agreement was almost identical to the Egyptian initiative, supported by both the PA and Israel towards the start of the conflict, which “said that the priority should be to stop the fighting to be followed by the implementation of the 2012 understandings [between Hamas and Israel],” agreed following Operation Pillar of Defence in November 2012. Abbas said that there was no difference between the original Egyptian plan and this week’s ceasefire, “other than the losses and suffering we went through.” More than 2,000 Palestinians were killed during the last seven weeks of fighting.
In addition, Abbas also condemned Hamas’s public execution this week of dozens of alleged collaborators with Israel, who were apprehended and almost immediately killed without any legal process. Abbas commented, “They should be executed within the frame of the law and not in the streets.”
Meanwhile, Hamas’s political leader Khaled Mashaal continued to portray the conflict as an achievement. He told a news conference in Qatar, “The resistance triumphed in Gaza.” He added, “This is just a milestone to reaching our objective” and called it an “important station on the way to liberation,” indicating an intention towards further violence. Mashaal claimed that the conflict brought Palestinians closer to “Jerusalem, the Aqsa Mosque and our holy sites.”