Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar on Monday rejected as a waste of time and money the referendum President Mahmoud Abbas has said he will call unless Hamas changes its policy toward Israel.
Zahar is a senior Hamas leader, and his remarks were the Islamic militant group's clearest rejection yet of a referendum, underlining the widening rift between Abbas's Fatah faction and Hamas, the governing party since it won elections in January.
'This process needs money, we have no money. Nobody will recognize Israel, there is no need for a referendum,' Zahar told Reuters during a visit to Malaysia for a meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement.
The United States and its allies have cut off aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority to put pressure on Hamas to renounce violence, recognize Israel and abide by interim peace deals. The Hamas charter calls for the destruction of Israel.
On Thursday, Abbas set a 10-day deadline for Hamas to accept his proposal that the Palestinians agree to a peace settlement if Israel withdraws from all of the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem, occupied since the 1967 Middle East war.
Abbas said that if Hamas refused to back the proposal, he would call a referendum on it in July.
Abbas opened talks in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Sunday with Hamas militants and other factions, trying to persuade them to accept the proposal.
But Hamas's official representative did not attend Monday's session, saying he was blocked by Israeli checkpoints.
Hamas has demanded that the talks be moved to Gaza, its political stronghold, but has already rejected Abbas's 10-day deadline and scorned his peace proposal, which was drawn up by Palestinian leaders held in Israeli jails.
PRISONERS' PLAN
The prisoners' plan, based on previous Arab peace initiatives, calls for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel and for Israel to withdraw from territories, including East Jerusalem, that it captured in the 1967 war.
'Nobody denies that there is a big division' between Hamas and Fatah, Zahar said. 'But who is the judge? The people who voted for Hamas and chose their representatives. Everybody should respect the result.'
The peace proposal carries weight because the prisoners who drew it up, jailed for violence against Israelis, are regarded as heroes by many Palestinians.
Israel has not responded to the plan and has vowed to set its borders with Palestinian territory unilaterally unless peace talks can be resumed within months.
'He (Abbas) believes in political methods which, from our point of view, will be unable to be implemented. It's unrealistic,' Zahar said of Abbas. 'We are not afraid of a referendum but it's a waste of time and money.'
To solve the government's financial problems resulting from the halt in aid and Israel's freezing of customs and tax revenues, Zahar proposed that every Muslim in the world donate $1 'so we can raise $1.3 billion per year.'
He said the donations should be deposited in the Cairo-based Arab League's accounts and 'we will find a way to bring the money to our people.'
Many banks have so far refused to transfer funds to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority because of intense U.S. pressure.
(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and Wafa Amr in Ramallah)