Armed resistance is a legal right and method of achieving Palestinian rights, Hamas announced yesterday in its proposed platform for the next Palestinian government.
Hamas has been charged with forming the government after its landslide victory in the January parliamentary elections.
The main issue of the platform, which Hamas premier-designate Ismael Haniyeh submitted to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on Friday, is to end Israeli occupation and establish a sovereign, independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
On the key issue of whether a Hamas-led government would recognize previous agreements the Palestinian Authority signed with Israel, the platform said that ‘the cabinet would deal with the reality resulting from previous accords reached between the PA and the state of the occupation.’
‘It is the right of the new cabinet to reconsider these accords on the basis of respecting international law and to implement them in order to protect the rights and interests of our Palestinian people,’ the platform said.
Azzam al-Azzam, parliamentary spokesman for Abbas' Fatah party, told reporters that the Hamas platform did not take a clear stance on an obligation to recognize previous signed agreements.
Another Fatah spokesman, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, told Voice of Palestine Radio that the Hamas platform ‘could be called a political platform, but without politics.’
He said that nowadays the Palestinian interest directly related to the Israeli-Palestinian accords, which were sponsored by the International community and ‘any political party ... cannot jump over this fact.’
According to the Hamas platform, the new government will also adhere to the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in what is now Israel, and the government would work to free Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons.
The platform also said that Hamas would ‘consider a mechanism for negotiations’ if Israel ‘recognized the Palestinian people's national rights and withdrew from the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.’
The Hamas document was also criticized by the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, whose parliamentary head, Qays Abdel Kareem, told Voice of Palestine that its positions on public issues lacked clarity, including those needed to achieve Palestinian national goals.
More U.S. aid
Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced yesterday that the United States is considering increasing humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. She also urged Hamas to choose a peaceful path in government.
Speaking to reporters en route to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, Rice said Hamas must make its intentions clear.
‘The road map is the way for a better life for the Palestinian people. Whatever government they form needs to make clear to the international community pretty soon that that will be the policy of the government,’ she said.
The State Department is reviewing all aid to the Palestinians to ensure no U.S. funds reach Hamas. While prevented under U.S. law from giving aid directly to a Hamas-led government, Rice said she hoped the United States could provide more humanitarian aid to the Palestinians.
‘We are looking at ways to even increase our humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people during this period of time, but there are important choices that the Palestinian people face concerning the road map and the Quartet requirements,’ she said.
Rice did not indicate whether she would ask Congress for more humanitarian aid. It is more likely that any new help will come from funds previously earmarked for the Palestinian Authority.