Hamas Blasts Abbas for Decision to Resubmit UN Membership Bid

MOSCOW, January 5 (Sputnik), Ekaterina Blinova — Hamas claims it is "totally opposed" to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas's decision to resubmit a United Nations Security Council resolution demanding Israel withdrawal from "occupied territories" and the establishment of independent Palestinian state by 2017.

"Hamas is totally opposed to any return to the U.N. Security Council by the Palestinian Authority. Such a step would be political foolishness, which plays a dangerous game with the destiny of our nation. Mahmoud Abbas and the leadership of the Palestinian Authority should completely stop this political foolishness," Hamas's spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in a statement as quoted by Agence France Presse.

It should be noted that on January 2, 2015, Mahmoud Abbas announced that he would resubmit the resolution, although it failed to win the decisive nine "yes" votes.

"We didn't fail, the UN Security Council failed us. We will go again to the Security Council, why not? Perhaps after a week. We are studying it, and we will study this with our allies and especially Jordan… to submit the resolution again, a third time or even a fourth time," Abbas said during a conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah, as cited by Al Jazeera.

Agence France Presse reports that on January 1, 2015 five new non-permanent member-states, namely Angola, Malaysia, New Zealand, Spain and Venezuala, joined the UN Security Council, adding that some of them support Palestine's plea for independence. Thus far, it could obviously change the balance of forces in the council.

However, according to Al Jazeera, "any resubmission would face almost certain failure," since the United States is most likely to use its veto power, blocking Abbas's plan. Washington has already labeled the Palestinian resolution as "one-sided and unproductive," the media outlet adds.

Commenting on recent Hamas's statement, Arutz Sheva, an Israeli news agency, emphasizes that "the remarks [made by Hamas] are just the latest in a series of signs that the Hamas-Fatah government, formed last year after years of tension due to Hamas's bloody takeover of Gaza in 2007, is slowly crumbling." The media outlet points to Hamas's attempts to carry out a military coup against the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria in August 2014 and cites Sami Abu Zuhri, who declared in December 2014 that "the six-month mandate of the unity government" established in June had ended.

It is worth mentioning that Hamas also slammed Mahmoud Abbas's initiative to join the International Criminal Court and to sign international conventions and treaties. Hamas's leadership claimed Abbas did not have the right to make such decisions without getting approval from the Palestinian parliament.