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Palestinian PM Ismail Haniyeh: US and EU halting of aid is "blackmail". (AP)
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners April 9, 2006 |
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After a week in office, Hamas has begun to realize that it cannot govern without the world's recognition, but is still grappling with the international community's demands that it moderate its positions, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in remarks published Saturday.
Abbas spoke after the European Union and the United States announced Friday they are halting hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority. Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas on Saturday denounced the decisions as "blackmail," and said Hamas would not change its positions.
Still, Hamas has sent conflicting messages in recent days. Haniyeh has said that the Islamic militant group will not comply with the international community's demands that it recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept existing peace agreements. However, Haniyeh has also said Abbas is free to negotiate with Israel, and others in the group have raised the possibility of accepting a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev dismissed Hamas' attempts to portray itself as more moderate as "verbal gymnastics." Hamas has killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings, and has been labeled a terrorist group by the United States and Europe.
"You may notice some confusion in their political positions," Abbas told the British newspaper The Guardian, referring to Hamas. "If Hamas does not change, nobody will deal with them. ... They came to understand it. In the beginning, during the elections, they had some illusions that they can deliver, that they can survive without help."
"But they started realizing that this is not doable," Abbas was quoted as saying. "But they are only a week in office, so let us wait. It needs time."
Haniyeh has acknowledged that the government is broke and would have trouble paying the salaries of 140,000 government employees, who with their dependents make up about one-third of the Palestinians. Government paychecks for March are more than a week overdue, and the new Palestinian finance minister has said he is still $85 million short, more than half the total needed.
On Friday, Abbas met with Haniyeh to try to settle some of the growing differences between him and the Hamas government. Abbas is a moderate who was elected separately last year. The two sides have been wrangling over authority, and earlier in the week, Abbas assumed control over more branches of the security forces.
Abbas, meanwhile, warned Israel that it cannot solve its conflict with the Palestinians by drawing borders unilaterally, without negotiations. Israel can postpone the conflict for a decade, he said. "After 10 years, our sons will feel it (the border) is unfair and they will return back to the struggle," he said.
Israel's designated prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has said he would try to resume peace talks with the Palestinians, but has not said whether he would negotiate with Abbas even if Hamas does not change its views.
The Palestinians fear that Olmert is not serious about reviving negotiations, and that his real plan is to draw Israel's borders with a Palestinian state unilaterally. Olmert has said he wants final borders in place by 2010.
Olmert, who is in the midst of forming a ruling coalition, has said Israel wants to annex large areas the Palestinians demand for their state, including east Jerusalem and large Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria - a plan likely to be met by wall-to-wall Palestinian rejection.
"Nobody will accept it. The struggle will continue," Abbas said.
In the southern Gaza town of Rafah, meanwhile, six Palestinians remained hospitalized Saturday, two of them in serious condition, after being wounded in an Israeli air strike a day earlier.
Israeli aircraft fired four missiles into a car carrying Palestinian terrorists, killing six people, including a bomb maker and his 7-year-old son, in the deadliest attacks since the Hamas government took office. The other four dead were wanted men, Palestinian security officials said.
The strike targeted a training camp of the Popular Resistance Committees, an umbrella group for gunmen from various factions, including many with ties to the Islamic militant Hamas. The group has attacked Israeli targets in the past, including planting bombs under tanks.
Near Rafah, two Palestinians were killed when the tunnel they were crawling through under the Gaza-Egypt border collapsed, Palestinian police said. The tunnel apparently caved in overnight but the bodies were found only after dawn Saturday, the police said.
Palestinians frequently smuggle weapons or contraband into the Gaza Strip from Egypt.
The two Palestinians are from a family known for drug and food smuggling in the area, the police said.
United States will cut up to $411 million; EU says it will cancel aid
Palestinian government employees were dealt a blow Friday when the European Union announced it is cutting off aid to the new Hamas rulers and the United States said it will cancel or suspend more than $411 million in projects aimed at indirectly assisting Palestinians.
At the same time, the United States will redirect some of that money to humanitarian projects for the impoverished Palestinian people. Humanitarian assistance will rise by 57 percent to $287 million over several years, the department said.
Another $13 million will go for new vetting procedures, including a special inspector general, to ensure that even humanitarian aid funneled through the U.N. Relief Agency and approved charities does not end up in Hamas hands, the department said.
The money being cut or suspended includes funds for public works construction, training public officials and revitalizing the Palestinian economy. Of the $411 million that could be cut over several years, $165 million is still under review by U.S. officials.
The United States and the European Union consider Hamas a terrorist organization and each country bans official dealings with it. Hamas won parliamentary elections in the Palestinian territories in January and it formed a government that took power this month. The United States began a review of its aid package to the Palestinians shortly after the election, and has already eliminated direct aid to the Palestinian Authority.
"It is our desire to help provide for the basic humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a statement read to reporters by department spokesman Sean McCormack. But she added, "The new Palestinian government must take responsibility for the consequences of its policies."
The United States has long channeled most of its assistance to the Palestinians through indirect means, to humanitarian efforts such as food, maternal and child health programs and education and also for projects that only indirectly benefited the Palestinian government. These include such projects as roads, water works and training programs for judges, electoral workers and others.
The United States will redirect about $100 million from canceled projects to humanitarian assistance, the official said. Some of the remaining pot of approximately $140 million will be eaten up in the process of ending or disengaging from those projects, but it is not clear where all the money will go.
The official said the State Department will consult with Congress on the next move. Congress has already approved all the spending under review, and has not yet considered how to apportion new money now that Hamas is in place.
The West has been threatening to cut nearly $1 billion in annual aid to the Palestinians since the election, which turned out the moderate Fatah Party that Washington had hoped could gradually move toward peace with Israel. Hamas has refused to renounce violence or recognize Israel's right to exist.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Friday the European Union has to find new ways of providing aid to Palestinians because their new Hamas leaders have not changed the militant group's violent ideology.
"The conditions were set," Steinmeier told reporters after meeting his Czech counterpart Cyril Svoboda.
"Unfortunately, we can't see any clear signal that would make it possible for us to continue financing (of the Palestinians) in the same way as we did in the past," Steinmeier said.
"We have to prepare certain changes in the way of financing (the Palestinians)," he said.
Foreign ministers of the 25-nation bloc were to meet in Brussels Monday to "decide about further financing on the Palestinian territory," Steinmeier said without further details. The meeting was to decide on how to deal in the longer term with aid, which is considered vital to keeping the Palestinian economy afloat.
Without money from the Arab world, Europe and the United States, a Hamas-led government would be nearly broke.
Haniyeh said Saturday that his government would not change its policies, despite what he said were U.S. and EU attempts to "blackmail" Hamas.
"In the shadow of the unfair and unjust decisions adopted by the West and the U.S. administration ... I want to affirm here that this siege and this blockade have one aim and one target, to blackmail the government," Haniyeh told reporters in Gaza. "They are not going to blackmail us or make us give in on the rights and principles of the Palestinian people."
Mubarak denies asking Hamas to recognize Israel, urges peace talks
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Saturday denied asking Hamas to recognize Israel but said he would work with both the new Palestinian and Israeli governments to help resume peace negotiations.
In an interview with Al-Arabiya satellite network, Mubarak said he believed progress could be made with both partners in the peace process in order to improve the livelihood of Palestinians.
The television interviewer asked Mubarak about a report in Asharq al-Awsat newspaper that his intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, had urged Hamas to recognize the Jewish state now that it is leading a Palestinian government.
But Mubarak denied that report.
"Neither Omar Suleiman nor anybody else can ask Hamas to recognize Israel," he said. "They have to think and assess a stand."
"Then we have to help out in starting up negotiations, so that progress would be reached in the road map issue," said Mubarak, who has already arranged a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister-designate Ehud Olmert.
The long-stalled "road map" peace plan - sponsored by the United States, European Union, Russia and the United Nations - calls for an end to Palestinian violence and Jewish settlement building and envisions the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Olmert has agreed to visit Mubarak in Egypt after he forms his coalition government.
"At the same time we will send for the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the president of Palestinian Authority and Hamas to talk about this," Mubarak said. "I think we can talk to Olmert, and try to persuade him, with the cooperation of the Americans, to reach some progress in the peace operation with Palestinians."
Mubarak said a return to peace negotiations was "a must."
"I don't know if Hamas is going to join them, or someone else. I do not intervene in Palestinian affairs. But I say that certainly there most be a return to the negotiations. If they (the Israelis) want to sit with Hamas, or the PLO, they should sit at the negotiating table and start resolving their problems, for the sake of the people who are suffering."
"The poverty is increasing and the people do not know how to live," Mubarak said of the Palestinians. "The (financial) aid has been frozen, and then unfrozen; it is impossible for people to live like this."
"How long will the Arabs keep on granting donations? One, two or three years? What will they do for a lifetime? The issue should be resolved," he said.
AP contributed to this report.
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