Hamas: Abbas does not represent us

As the so-called ‘peace summit’ is set to begin in Annapolis, in the U.S., on Tuesday, the elected leadership of the Palestinian people, the Hamas party, challenged the right of the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to represent the Palestinian people.

Deposed Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyya

"The Land of Palestine ... is purely owned by the Palestinians.  No person, group, government or generation has the right to give up one inch of it.  Anyone who cooperates with the occupation is a traitor," said senior Hamas official Mahmoud Zahhar in a speech to the 2,000 attendees of a Hamas-led ‘counter-summit’ in Gaza Monday.

 

The Palestinian people elected the Hamas party to lead the legislature and form the Palestinian government in January 2006, but their leadership was never accepted by the U.S. and Israel – despite the fact that the election was free and fair, and called a ‘model of democracy in action’.

 

The deposed Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyya was one of the signatories of a document on Monday condemning the Annapolis summit and Abbas’ role as ‘representative’ of the Palestinian people.  Haniyya reiterated that Abbas does not have a right to give away a single inch of Palestine.

 

Israel has pushed the Palestinian Authority, with Mahmoud Abbas at its head, to recognize Israel as an exclusively Jewish state – a recognition that would preclude the internationally-recognized right of return for the millions of Palestinian refugees displaced by Israel.  Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has made this recognition a precursor of any ‘agreement’.

 

But Abbas, unlike his precursor, the late Yasser Arafat, is not the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, only of the Israeli-created Palestinian Authority.  Therefore, according to the Palestinian constitution, he is not the recognized representative of the Palestinian people.