Hamas agrees with 90 % of a document compiled by jailed faction leaders and which Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas wants the Islamists to adopt, members said on Friday.
Adnan Asfur, a Hamas leader in the occupied West Bank, told cross-party crisis talks that his party approved “90%” of the document drawn up by Palestinian faction leaders jailed in Israel.
Nevertheless, he expressed reservations about parts of the text referring to “international resolutions as a basis to end the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict” and “recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organisation as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”.
The international community is demanding that Hamas, which took office in March, recognise Israel’s right to exist, renounce violence and abide by signed peace agreements.
Hamas does not belong to the Palestine Liberation Organisation, which groups the main nationalist factions, including Palestinian Authority president Abbas’s former ruling Fatah party.
The Islamist movement has instead asked the organisation to be restructured.
Asfur was speaking on the second day of a national-dialogue conference that is seeking to resolve deadly rivalry between Fatah and Hamas.
Abbas on Thursday threatened to call a referendum on the blueprint should Fatah and Hamas fail to agree a way out of the impasse in 10 days.
The blueprint proposes that activities be “confined to the territories occupied in 1967” — which could signal an end to attacks inside Israel — and calls for the creation of a national-unity government.
It also advocates an independent state in all the territory occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War, namely the Gaza Strip and the entire West Bank, including east Jerusalem.
Were Hamas to accept the document, it would entail an implicit recognition of Israel’s right to exist, although its charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. — AFP