Abbas criticizes Hamas in TV speech

[maddezmom]

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas harshly criticized the Islamic Hamas on Wednesday over its takeover of Gaza last week, referring to the group's members as "murderous terrorists."

In an uncharacteristically fiery televised speech, Abbas said Hamas replaced the "national project" with "its project of darkness," attacking the symbols of government in Gaza, including the house of the late leader Yasser Arafat.

Abbas declared, "There is no dialogue with those murderous terrorists."

Abbas accused Hamas of trying to set up its own state in Gaza alone, a step he said would scuttle Palestinian hopes for independence. He said he had tried to prevent the conflict through "continuous dialogue." Instead, "we are seeing assassination of leaders of Palestinian security and Fatah in Gaza."

more:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070620/ap_on_re_mi_ea/palestinians_abbas_2

[barb162]

1. Abbas: "There is no dialogue with those murderous terrorists."

He has THAT straight! What took him so long?

[bemildred]

2. Abbas: No dialogue with 'murderous terrorists' in Hamas

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday harshly criticized the Islamic Hamas movement for seizing control in the Gaza Strip last week, and branded its members as "murderous terrorists" who carried out a "coup."

Speaking Wednesday in a televised address to the Palestinian people, Abbas accused Hamas of attacking national symbols during its takeover of Gaza.

Over the weekend, Abbas set up the new West Bank-based government after dissolving the coalition between Hamas and his own Fatah movement following the Hamas' armed takeover of Gaza.

Abbas said Hamas had replaced the national project with its project of darkness, attacking the symbols of government in Gaza, including the house of the late leader Yasser Arafat.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/873266.html

[bemildred]

3. Abbas rules out dialogue with Hamas

The Palestinian president has ruled out talks with the Hamas movement whom he accused of trying to assassinate him and of carrying out a coup in the Gaza Strip.

Addressing his people on TV on Wednesday, Mahmoud Abbas harshly criticised Hamas for attacking "national symbols" during its takeover of Gaza last week.

Abbas accused Khaled Meshaal, Hamas leader-in-exile, of being part of a plot to assassinate him, referring to the group's members as "murderous terrorists".

"No dialogue with those killers, coup plotters," Abbas told Fatah leaders in the occupied West Bank.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/88F3E3B9-CFFE-4BCB-BC43-5CD8D72EC138.htm

[bemildred]

4. Fatah faced with enemy from within as splinter group denounces the old guard

Having lost control of Gaza City to its Islamist rivals, the secular Fatah confronted a new enemy yesterday when a breakaway faction emerged to challenge its leadership. Yassir Arafat’s Fatah, or Fatah al-Yassir, was launched as a rebranded version of Fatah purged of its corrupt, bloated West Bank leadership and spiced up with a stiff dose of Islamic ideology.

In the Gaza hall where Mr Arafat made his first speech in 1994 on returning to Gaza from exile, six gunmen ran on to the stage, Kalashnikovs in hand, to face a crowd of 1,000 mostly young men. The beards and black uniforms resembled the Hamas fighters who now rule this city, but the beaming poster of Yassir Arafat behind them marked them out as Fatah.

The Fatah crowd, nervous of gathering in a Hamas-run city, even though the meeting was advertised on Hamas television, were enthusiastic. The leader of this latest Palestinian movement, adding to a bewildering array of splinter groups, sub-factions and breakaway militias, is Ahmed Abu Hillel, a slight man with a greying beard who used to be the spokesman of another Fatah armed wing, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

He denounced his ousted Fatah rivals as hard-drinking Israeli stooges who had collabo-rated with the Jewish state to eliminate real resistance, while Yassir Arafat had been arming suicide bombers secretly even as he was forced by cronies to denounce these acts publicly.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article1964006.ece