Hamas: Time to Prep for Rule Without Abbas

TEL AVIV — Fatah criticized the Hamas terrorist group on Wednesday after spokespeople for Gaza’s Hamas rulers said that Palestinians should be preparing for life after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the PA has finished its historic role.

The Palestinian president gave a speech on Tuesday before the UN Security Council in which he presented what the PA called the Palestinian Peace Initiative.

“Abbas’ speech doesn’t represent the prevailing national Palestinian position that the Oslo Accords should be canceled and that there should be no return to negotiations,” said a special statement released by Hamas in reaction to the speech.

Hamas accused Abbas of trying to “revive the process of a political settlement that has already died while begging for the resumption of negotiation.”

Official Ousama Hamdan told media outlets that, “The Palestinian Authority has finished its path and the Palestinians are preparing for the age that comes after Abbas.”

Hamdan also addressed comments given to Israeli media by the Secretary General of the Executive Committee of the PLO, Dr. Saeb Erekat, who told Israel’s Channel 2 that the Palestinian Authority has ceased to exist “and even though President Abbas will be angry with me, the true president of the Palestinian Authority is Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman.”

According to Hamdan, Erekat’s comments “reflect the crisis of the negotiating and security cooperation camp. The continued settlement and Judaization of Jerusalem proves this, but the negotiating camp doesn’t understand that they’ve failed or how to do the right thing.” Hamdan used anti-Semitic rhetoric and ignored longstanding Jewish ties to Jerusalem.

In response to the attacks from Hamas and its officials against the PA president, Abbas’ party Fatah claimed that the comments from Hamas’ leaders “fit well with the agenda of the occupation.”

Fatah spokesman Ousama Qawasmeh also claimed that even as the Palestinian president confronts the “occupation” — a derogatory term used by Palestinians to refer to Israel –“we are the targets of parallel attacks from Netanyahu, Lieberman and the American ambassador to the UN together with Palestinian collaborators.”

According to Qawasmeh, “It is the right of every Arab and every Palestinian to wonder about the meaning of this unjustified coordinated attack and its meaning on the national level. The comments from Hamas official Ousama Hamdan about preparing for the age after President Mahmoud Abbas are direct quotes from the Israeli ambassador to the UN.”