Hamas PM slams White House in appeal to Americans

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya looks on as he inspects a destroyed house which was occupied by Israeli soldiers for three days in the nothern Gaza Strip city of Beit Lahya, 08 July 2006. Haniya, whose Hamas-led government is ostracised in the West, emerged from the shadows to slam US Mideast policy in a direct appeal to Americans.(AFP/File/Thomas Coex)


July 11, 2006

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, whose Hamas-led government is ostracised in the West, emerged from the shadows to slam US Mideast policy in a direct appeal to Americans.

In an opinion published in The Washington Post entitled "Aggression Under False Pretenses," Haniya accused the White House of sabotaging his government, and Israel and the United States of "economic and diplomatic warfare".

"Our new government was met from the very beginning by acts of explicit, declared sabotage by the White House," he wrote.

Slamming "America's complacency" in the face of "war crimes" rooted in a "rhetorical green light: 'Israel has a right to defend itself'," Haniya heavily criticised an Israeli offensive in Gaza, now into a third week.

The offensive, he said, was the "explosive follow-up to a five-month campaign of economic and diplomatic warfare directed by the United States and Israel" ever since his Islamist movement won a January parliamentary election.

In a direct appeal to ordinary Americans from a senior leader of a movement branded a terror organisation by the United States, Haniya urged them to look critically at their government's policy.

"As I inspect the ruins of our infrastructure... all turned to rubble once more by F-16s and American-made missiles, my thoughts again turn to the minds of Americans. What do they think of this?

"Surely the American people grow weary of this folly, after 50 years and 160 billion dollars in taxpayer support for Israel's war-making capacity -- its 'defense'," Haniya added.

"Some Americans, I believe, must be asking themselves if all this blood and treasure could not have bought more tangible results for Palestine if only US policies had been predicated from the start on historical truth, equity and justice," he added.

Haniya said Israel's onslaught on Gaza, launched following the abduction of an Israeli soldier and in the face of rocket attacks, was part of an operation to undermine his government that had been planned for months.

He accused Israel of using Corporal Gilad Shalit's abduction as a "pretext" for the offensive, while "thousands of Palestinians, including hundreds of women and children, remain in Israeli jails" for resisting occupation.

"A nuclear Israel possesses the 13th largest military force on the planet, one that is used to rule an area about the size of New Jersey and whose adversaries there have no conventional armed forces," he charged.

Haniya, whose Gaza offices were bombed by Israel last week and who has been subject to indirect death threats from the Israeli government, threatened there could be no peace unless the Jewish state stepped back.

"We present this clear message: If Israel will not allow Palestinians to live in peace, dignity and national integrity, Israelis themselves will not be able to enjoy those same rights," he said.

The solution was to address the "full dimensions of Palestinian national rights," namely "statehood for the West Bank and Gaza, a capital in Arab East Jerusalem and resolving the 1948 Palestinian refugee issue fairly," he wrote.

"If Americans only knew the truth, possibility might become reality," he finished.

Hamas's charter advocates the destruction of the Jewish state and the establishment of an independent state in all historic Palestine.

The Islamist movement, however, last month reached agreement on a national conciliation document with the Fatah party of moderate president Mahmud Abbas, which also called for a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders. The acceptance of the document has been seen by some as implicit recognition from Hamas of Israel's right to exist.

In Israel, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni rejected Haniya's proposed solution to the Mideast conflict, stating that it did not imply the recognition of the Jewish state's right to exist and rejected a two-state solution.

"The creation of a Palestinian state is the whole solution for the Palestinians, wherever they may be -- those Palestinians in the territories and the refugees," she told reporters in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv.

Livni said that after having read Haniya's piece it was clear that he did not wish to resolve the conflict on the basis of the 1967 border, but rather go back to 1948 "fundamental question" of Israel's existence.

"If he wants to discuss the 1948 questions there is no recognition of Israel's right to exist," she said.