The Hamas/Fatah merger means that the illusion in Washington that there were “moderate” “Palestinians” with whom they could make a deal, and who would agree to a genuine peace accord with Israel, should end. But it won’t. “Haniya: Hamas won’t recognize Israel,” from Deutsche Presse-Agentur, May 15:
Gaza City – Ismail Haniya, the de-facto Palestinian premier in Gaza, reiterated in Gaza City on Sunday that his Islamist Hamas movement would not recognize Israel.
He told hundreds of worshippers at Gaza City’s main mosque ‘to pray for the end of the state of Israel.’
‘The Zionist project in Palestine must end,’ Haniya told participants at the dawn prayers at al-Omari Mosque, as Palestinians were marking Nakba Day.
Nakba means catastrophe in Arabic and marks the dispersal of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their villages in what is now Israel, in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that erupted a day after Israel was established on May 14.
Haniya, who praised the reconciliation pact signed with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas Fatah party in Cairo on May 4, said that ‘to achieve our goals, the liberation of our occupied territories, we should have one leadership.’…