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Hamas rejects call to disarm, recognise Israel

* Says the world should ask Israel to end occupation instead of telling Palestinians to stand handcuffed in the face of aggression

GAZA: Hamas rejected a call from the Middle East peacemaking Quartet on Monday to renounce violence and recognise Israel if it participates in a Palestinian government, a spokesman for the group said.

“The Quartet should have demanded an end to (Israeli) occupation and aggression ... not demanded that the victim should recognise the occupation and stand handcuffed in the face of the aggression,” spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said.

Abu Zuhri said the Palestinian people were being punished for exercising their democratic right.

“The Quartet has punished the Palestinian people for having cast their vote,” he said.

He added that Hamas was keen to have good relations with Western countries.

Aid threat: Hamas accused the West of blackmail Tuesday after the major players in the peace process told it to renounce violence and recognise Israel’s right to exist or else see funding to the Palestinians cut. “The international aid which is offered to our people is a humanitarian need for the Palestinian people who are still living under Israeli occupation,” Ismail Haniya, who led the list of Hamas candidates in last week’s election, told AFP.

“This aid should not be linked to unfair conditions,” he added.

Hamas’s overall leader, the Damascus-based Khaled Meshaal, said the attempts by the West to force change on Hamas were doomed to failure.

“Our message to the US and EU governments is this: your attempt to force us to give up our principles or our struggle is in vain,” Meshaal wrote in Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

“Hamas is immune to bribery, intimidation and blackmail,” he added. Earlier, the United States and Europe agreed on Tuesday to continue critical funding to Palestinians but warned election victors Hamas that its future government must give up violence and recognise Israel.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her partners in the Quartet for Middle East peace - the United Nations, Russia and the European Union - pledged overnight Monday in London to keep money flowing into Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas’s interim caretaker administration.

“We do believe that Abu Mazen needs to be supported,” said Rice, using Abbas’s nom de guerre, ensuring that funds will be available to pay for Palestinian police officers and civil servants.

But the Quartet warned that the Palestinians’ critical lifeline of foreign aid could be cut off unless Hamas - perpetrator of deadly suicide bomb attacks on Israelis - abandons violence, recognises Israel and embraces the diplomatic “roap map” to peace.

In a statement issued in the middle of the night, the Quartet said it believed “that the Palestinian people have the right to expect that a new government will address their aspirations for peace and statehood”. But the statement stressed that “future assistance to any future government would be reviewed by donors against the government’s commitment to the principles of non-violence, recognition of Israel and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations, including the road map”. reuters

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