GAZA CITY: Ismail Haniyeh, the deposed prime minister of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, yesterday said his movement accepts a Palestinian state alongside Israel with its 1967 borders with full sovereignty and Jerusalem as its capital.
“We welcome any push for achieving this dream if there is a real plan for resolving the Palestinian issue,� Haniyeh said in a news conference with visiting former US President Jimmy Carter here.
Haniyeh also praised US President Barack Obama’s June 4 address in Cairo to the Muslim world. “We saw a new tone, a new language and a new spirit in the official US rhetoric,� he said.
Earlier, Carter denounced the Israeli blockade and the destruction wrought by its 22-day war on Gaza in December and January. “My primary feeling today is one of grief and despair and an element of anger when I see the destruction perpetrated against innocent people,� Carter said as he toured the impoverished territory.
“Tragically, the international community too often ignores the cries for help and the citizens of Palestine are treated more like animals than like human beings,� he said. “The starving of 1.5 million human beings of the necessities of life — never before in history has a large community like this been savaged by bombs and missiles and then denied the means to repair itself,� Carter said at a UN school graduation ceremony in Gaza City.
“I have to hold back tears when I see the deliberate destruction that has been wreaked against your people,� he said at a destroyed American school, saying it was “deliberately destroyed by bombs from F16s made in my country.�
Meanwhile, two Israeli human rights groups said yesterday that Israel is making it near-impossible for Gaza residents to move to the West Bank, even in humanitarian cases. “The procedure constitutes an escalation in Israel’s policy of separation between Gaza and the West Bank, undermining the prospect of a viable Palestinian state,� said Joel Greenberg of the Hamoked Center for the Defense of the Individual.
“Israel is preventing civilians from changing their place of residence using the vague pretext that it is responding to the security-political situation in the Gaza Strip,� he said at a joint news conference with the Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement.
- With input from agencies