Hamas, Fatah vow peaceful end to Palestinian problems

DAMASCUS (Reuters) – Leaders of Palestinian factions
including rivals Fatah and Hamas pledged on Tuesday to refrain
from violence in settling Palestinian problems after a
firefight between Hamas activists and Palestinian police left
three dead.

Farouk Kaddoumi, a leader of Fatah — the ruling faction of
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said the exiled leaders of
Palestinian groups agreed in Damascus that dialogue should be
the only way to solve their disputes.

Listing the decisions of their meetings, Kaddoumi said the
leaders agreed to “call all Palestinian powers and factions to
ban the use of weapons to solve internal differences.”

Kaddoumi said the leaders also agreed to “refrain from all
forms political and media provocations that can harm the
interests of our people and their national unity.”

Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshaal acknowledged the call,
but defended his militant group’s right to resist Israeli
occupation and to have a role in Palestinian political life at
the same time.

“So long as our land is occupied it is the right of the
Palestinian people and their factions to combine resistance and
political activities. Resistance and its arms are directed
against the occupation while political activity is part of
re-arranging the Palestinian home,” said Meshaal.

But “we refuse any inclination toward internal feuding
because our fixed national principles set Palestinian blood as
a taboo,” he told reporters after the meeting that also
comprised less senior leaders of key factions — the Islamic
Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine-General Command.

On Sunday, a Palestinian police commander and two civilian
bystanders were killed in firefights between policemen and
Hamas gunmen. Fifty people were wounded when militants tried to
storm a police station shortly afterwards, police said.

Palestinian police said Sunday’s fighting began when a Gaza
police patrol pulled over a carload of Hamas gunmen who were
flouting a new ban on the public display of weapons agreed to
by political leaders of the various militant factions.

Hamas has said the militants fought police on Sunday
“solely in self-defense” and they also acted to protect homes
of Hamas political leaders that came under gunfire from
policemen.

“We are in dire need to fortify our national unity and
solve any differences through dialogue and dialogue alone,”
said Meshaal, who blamed unspecified foreign interventions for
the tensions between factions.

Palestinian policemen stormed into Gaza’s parliament
building on Monday to demand a crackdown on militants, and
deputies called on Abbas to sack the cabinet for failing to
stamp out chaos in the streets.

The two challenges highlighted Abbas’s uphill struggle to
impose law and order in the Gaza Strip to make it the proving
ground of a future Palestinian state after Israel’s withdrawal
of settlers and soldiers completed last month.