A THREAT OR A PROMISE?

Top Hamas official predicts wave of Palestinian violence after Annapolis

Senior Damascus-based Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk was quoted on a Hamas Web site Friday as predicting a fresh wave of Palestinian violence in the wake of the upcoming U.S.-sponsored Middle East peace conference scheduled for next week.

Hamas was not invited to the conference, to be held next Tuesday in Annapolis, Maryland. The militant Islamic group has said that the summit is being held while Hamas-ruled Gaza is under an Israeli blockade and an international boycott, and therefore does not give a voice to all Palestinians.

"Resistance in all its forms and means will escalate in the West Bank and Gaza against the Zionist enemy," Marzouk said in a written interview. "This is because Annapolis will expose the arbitrariness of the [political] settlement track and its destructive endeavors."

Also Friday, Gaza's militant groups, including Hamas, rallied tens of thousands of their supporters in a public protest against the upcoming summit, saying no such negotiations can deliver Palestinian rights.

Demonstrators in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis marched following Friday prayers chanting "Death to Israel" and waving banners reading: (U.S. President George W.) "Bush is a war criminal not a peacemaker."

Local Hamas leaders told the Gaza demonstrators Friday that over the next few days they will hold rallies and public events against the conference, culminating in a Gaza City public meeting to coincide with the Annapolis parley.

"This is the first referendum against Annapolis," said Hamas official Khalil al-Haya. "The world must read what these rallies and conferences mean."

Riham Abu Khater, 17, said she opposed participation at Annapolis as it amounted to recognition of Israel.
"Nothing good will come out of it. Good will only come from the language of fighting, and from force," she said.

In the northern Gaza town of Jabalya, about two thousand Islamic Jihad activists and supporters took to the streets in protest at Arab participation in the Maryland meeting.

"We consider any Arab effort to make this summit a success as capitulation," said Khaled al-Batch, an Islamic Jihad leader. We don't recognize any results of this meeting...our response is resistance."

SOURCE

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