Hamas has called for the Arab League to review its decision to support the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian indirect peace talks, which have been stalled for more than a year due to Israel's refusal to halt settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Arab League foreign ministers agreed to support the U.S.-backed plan during a regular meeting in Cairo on Wednesday, giving Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas political backing to push through the resumption of talks.
"We expected that the meeting of Arab [foreign] ministers in Cairo would demonstrate a more firm position... Instead of this, their decision provides Arab auspices for the resumption of talks amid continuing intrusion on the Palestinian capital [Jerusalem] and Jewdaization of its holy places," Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister in Gaza, said during a government meeting on Wednesday.
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced last week that two holy sites located in the Palestinian Territories and once shared by Jews, Christians, and Muslims — Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron — would be included in a list of 150 Israeli National Heritage Sites. The move, which is seen as an effort to control the sites for exclusively Jewish use, sparked a wave of protests in the Islamic world.
Haniyeh made it clear that Hamas would support neither indirect, nor direct talks with the Israelis.
The Israeli government, in its turn, praised the Arab League's decision. Netanyahu stressed that his country had never opposed the resumption of talks.
"The world understands that our government is willing the talks [to resume] and takes uneasy practical steps to achieve this," he said.
The Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have stalled since Israel's late 2008 offensive on the Gaza Strip aimed at ending rocket fire from the Palestinian enclave. The conflict left 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead.
Settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, both occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, has been the main obstacle to reviving the peace talks.
Netanyahu announced in late November 2009 that construction would be limited in the occupied West Bank, but not in East Jerusalem. He also said construction would resume in the future. The Palestinians have refused to return to the negotiations until the construction is completely halted.
Under the internationally agreed roadmap for Middle East peace, Israel is obliged to freeze all settlement construction activity, and remove unauthorized outposts built since 2001 from the Palestinian territories.
A meeting of the Quartet of international mediators in Israeli-Palestinian talks, which comprises Russia, the United States, the United Nations and the European Union, will take place in the Russian capital, Moscow, in mid-March.
GAZA STRIP, March 4 (RIA Novosti)
