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Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal talks to reporters in Damascus, Tuesday. (AP)
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners February 1, 2006 |
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A senior Hamas official said Tuesday his group is already looking for new sources of funding after the international community threatened to cut off aid, warning that Hamas - which won legislative elections in a landslide - will not be "blackmailed."
Meanwhile, in a swirl of Arab diplomacy, Saudi Arabia and Jordan pressed the militant Palestinian Hamas organization on Tuesday to moderate its stand on Israel and to entice the defeated Fatah party into a deal to share power.
And there were growing indications that the flurry of diplomacy could lead to a meeting, perhaps later this week in Cairo, between Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, of the mainstream Fatah party, and the Damscus-based political leader of Hamas, Khaled Mashaal. It would be the first meeting between the two since July when Abbas visited Syria.
"A delegation from Hamas' leadership will start a regional tour to Islamic and Arab countries sometime soon," Hamas official Mohammed Nazzal told The Associated Press Tuesday night.
He said the group would start in Egypt, making stops in Saudi Arabia and Iran as well. He gave no date for the start of the mission.
Mashaal said late Tuesday he would meet with Abbas "at the suitable time" but that no date had been set.
He spoke to reporters during a meeting with a 10-member delegation from Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood, its political arm the Islamic Action Front and lawmakers that visited Syria to congratulate Hamas leaders for their victory.
Syria said it will propose a resolution at the coming Arab summit that calls on Arab states to continue aid to the Palestinians, the official SANA agency reported Tuesday.
Egypt, meanwhile, sent intelligence chief Omar Suleiman to Damascus where he was thought to have met with Hamas leaders of Mashaal's the so-called "outside" and more hardline Syrian-based arm of the group.
Suleiman's mission was to learn the group's plans and explore what role Egypt can play, according to an Egyptian official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the visit.
Suleiman has long been Egypt's point man for the Palestinian issue. Last year, he played the leading role in a Cairo conference that produced a cease-fire by Hamas and other militant Palestinians. Hamas has stuck by the cease-fire, though others - including Islamic Jihad - have carried out several anti-Israeli attacks.
Hamas wants Egypt to help persuade Fatah to join a unity government but is facing resistance from the mainstream faction and likely will face demands for concessions.
Abbas flew to Cairo Tuesday night after a session in Amman with Jordan's King Abdullah II earlier in the day. Abbas immediately went into meetings with Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif and Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit.
Abbas said there was nothing to prevent him meeting Mashaal, "but it's not on my schedule now." In Damascus, Hamas official Osama Hamdan said Mashaal will meet Abbas in Cairo in the near future but not during the Palestinian leader's Wednesday visit.
Abbas meets President Hosni Mubarak on Wednesday as does Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.
The Jordanian monarch said he told Abbas that all Palestinian factions must "understand the requirements of this period, deal with it logically, and prove to the whole world that there is a Palestinian partner able to go forward to achieve peace."
Hamas stunned Israel, its allies and much of the Arab world with its overwhelming victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections last week and is under intense pressure from the international community - the Arabs as well - to step back from its avowed platform of the destruction of Israel.
Hamas has so far resisted mounting pressure to disavow its calls for the destruction of Israel and renounce violence despite warnings of a cutoff of international aid for the Palestinians unless it does so as it forms a new government.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal voiced optimism Tuesday that Hamas - which has opposed Arab-Israeli peace talks and carried out dozens of suicide bombings against Israelis - might assume a more moderate agenda.
"I can't believe that they won't act responsibly as a government," al-Faisal said in Malaysia, where he was accompanying the Saudi king on a visit. "We have to wait and see, and we suggest that everybody wait and see. We need cool heads now, rather than reactions that close the door to (a) peaceful settlement."
Arab nations are eager to moderate Hamas and see it enter government with policies that would avoid a cutoff of international aid to the Palestinians and avert a breakdown in the peace process with Israel.
They also want to prevent the Hamas victory from boosting the Islamic movements in their own territories.
Western powers have said they will not fund a Hamas-led Palestinian government unless it renounces violence and recognizes Israel. And Israel has said it will not deal with a government that includes Hamas, which it regards as a terrorist organization.
On Tuesday, the Belgian government suspended two new development projects in the Palestinian territories until it becomes clear whether Hamas will recognize the state of Israel, renounce violence and disarm, officials said.
At meetings in Brussels and London on Monday, the EU warned it could stop tens of millions of dollars (euros) in aid. But foreign ministers did not hide their fear that such a move could throw Gaza, Judea and Samaria into chaos, further radicalize the Palestinians, and open the way for Iran or Syria to fill the aid gap.
Threats of withdrawing foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority jeopardize environmental projects vital to Israel as well, Palestinian, Israeli and international officials said in a meeting Tuesday.
Experts focused on the waste-contaminated groundwater in Judea and Samaria, shared by Israelis and Palestinians. The water is supposed to be purified by natural processes, but the seepage of solid waste pollutants into the ground has damaged the process, according to a report issued Tuesday by Friends of the Earth.
Over the last few years, about $10 million from the World Bank has helped clean up many dumping areas and build a modern landfill near Jenin, said Ibrahim Dajani of the World Bank.
Cutting off funding for projects in the West Bank will harm Israel and the region because "pollution knows no boundaries," said Ilan Nissim, head of the solid waste division of the Israel's Environment Ministry.
The AP contributed to this report.
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