Abbas urges Hamas, Israel to move toward peace
RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urged Hamas yesterday to renounce violence and Israel to talk peace with him, cautioning that a unilateral Israeli plan for the West Bank would fuel extremism.
In a speech to mark Nakba, a day of mourning for Palestinians recalling the day Israel was founded in 1948, Abbas said Hamas, the Islamic movement that heads the Palestinian government, should honor existing peace agreements.
Palestinians should not be satisfied with ''fiery speeches and slogans that could bring about international isolation," Abbas said, repeating his call for Hamas ''to renounce all forms of violence."
Appealing to Israel, where Abbas is widely seen as a weak leader unable to engage in peacemaking while Hamas is in power, he said: ''We want to make a just and permanent peace with you.
''Let's make this year the year of peace, let's sit at the negotiations table away from the policy of diktats and unilateralism. Stop making excuses there's no Palestinian partner, the partner is there," Abbas, now visiting Russia, said in a pre-recorded address.
Hamas defeated Abbas's Fatah movement in January polls and took office in March. It is sworn to Israel's destruction and has ruled out peace talks.
In a speech in a soccer stadium in the southern Gaza town of Rafah after Abbas's address, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh rejected any change in Hamas's stance toward Israel. ''As I entered this stadium, a woman gave me this necklace telling me 'please do not make concessions,' and I tell her and I tell all women and men of our people: I swear to God we will not make concessions," he said.
As Haniyeh spoke, an Israeli air strike on a car in a nearby town wounded three Islamic Jihad militants. The Israeli military said they were ''en route to carrying out an attack against Israel."
Abbas made his peace offer a week before Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert visits the White House to outline his plan to remove isolated Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, bolster major enclaves, and draw a permanent frontier.
In his speech, Abbas warned Israel that unilaterally setting ''final borders," as Olmert has pledged to do by 2010 if peace talks cannot be resumed, would increase violence and extremism.
