By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff
Aug 10, 2005
The Hamas terrorist organization Wednesday demanded PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas publicly recognize the decisive role anti-Jewish Islamic terrorism played in driving Israel from Gaza and northern Samaria.
Palestinian Arab terrorism ?is a major reason for ending the occupation? in Gaza, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told China's Xinhua news agency.
Zuhri was reacting to a statement Abbas made a day earlier to the Palestinian Legislative Council in Gaza City, in which he criticized Hamas over a recent errant missile strike that killed an Arab boy and his father and urged the terror groups to hold off any further attacks until Israel had completed its planned withdrawal.
?I don't want to talk about whether firing these rockets is important or not, but I wanted to talk about the destructive consequences,? said Yasser Arafat's successor.
Abbas regularly condemns individual terror attacks against Israelis because the timing is detrimental to the ?Palestinian? cause. He has never decried the moral repugnance of such violence.
Abu Zuhri complained that Abbas had focused on ?one mistake,? while failing to ?mention how painful these rockets were? for the Jews.
?Occupation is ended only by resistance and not by negotiations. This is what the experience had proved. [Israel] had unilaterally said that it wanted to withdraw instead of negotiations,? the spokesman pointed out.
Public opinion polls conducted over the past year show a majority of Palestinian Arabs agree with Abu Zuhri, and view anti-Jewish terrorism as the deciding factor in getting Israel out of Gaza.
Last year, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert admitted unrelenting Islamic terror had necessitated Israel's flight from the strip.