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PNA, Hamas to meet in Cairo
Next Week
www.jerusalem-times.net/article/news/details/detail.asp?id=2364 Palestinian National Authority (PNA) is to hold talks with the Islamic group Hamas in Cairo next week to thrash out outstanding differences, newly appointed interior minister Hani al-Hassan told reporters at a security workshop in Jericho the only Palestinian city not occupied by the Israeli army. Hassan said that the meeting would take place next week, although he gave no details about what would be discussed or which officials would be present. Hamas did not deny or confirm the scheduled meeting. "There are a lot of things we have to solve between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority," he said Sunday. Relations between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority deteriorated sharply last month after a renegade Hamas cell killed a Palestinian police chief, sparking armed clashes in a Gaza Strip refugee camp. He said the meeting had been arranged through the mediation of the European Union, which earlier this year tried to broker an agreement among all Palestinian factions to end attacks on Israeli civilians but failed after Israel killed Hamas military leader, Salah Shehada, along with 14 civilians last July. Palestinian sources said that suicide attacks especially against civilians inside the green line would be the center of the discussions. Fateh movement, headed by President Yasser Arafat, believes that suicide attacks inside the green line is the reason behind the international view of the current Intifada as an act of violence and not resistance of the occupation. Hamas insists that suicide operation is the only option left for the Palestinian people to force Israel out of the Palestinian areas. According to official sources, Fateh delegation will be made up of Zakareya el-Agha, Mohammad Rashid, Samer Mashharawi and Ahmad Ghuneim, while Hamas' delegation will include Khaled Mash'al, Osama Hamdan, Imad el- Alami, and Moussa Abu Marzouq. The sources confirmed that media will not be present in the meeting and that the final location of the meeting will not be disclosed for the public for security reasons. This article ran in the November 7, 2002 issue of the Jerusalem Times
EU comment on killing Jews beyond the 'green line" Israel Resource News Agency requested comment from Mr. David Kriss, the press officer of the Delegation of the European Commission to the State of Israel,concerning the widely circulated unconfirmed report that the EU supported the notion that Arabs could murder Jews on the other side of the 1948-1967 armistice "green line" without any objection from the EU. Kriss stated emphatically said that no such EU policy existed, and also referred to Mr. Javier Sancho,Spokesman of the European Union Special Envoy to the MIddle East Peace Process, Ambassador Moratinos, who is now accompanying the talks in Cairo that took place over the past few days in Cairo between the PA and the HAMAS. Mr. Sancho stated, on the record, that the EU and the European Commission "condemn Arab terror wherever it would take place, on either side of the 'green line' . . . " Mr. Sancho was surprised to learn that official PBC radio this morning praised and justified last night's terror attack which took place at Kibbutz Metzer, in which a mother and her two small children along with another man and woman were murdered in cold blood by Arab terrorists. The PBC radio broadcast this morning at 7:30 a.m. described the attack on Kibbutz Metzer as "an attack on an Israeli settlement colony in which five Israeli settlers were killed". The PLO defines "illegal" Israeli settlements as those Jewish communities that replaced Arab villages that were abandoned in 1948. A surprised Mr. Sancho said that the European Commission had been assured that the PA had condemned the attack. However, when asked whether the EU or the European Commission had followed the official PA Voice of Palestine radio or TV broadcasts, Mr. Sancho acknowledged that his office does "not have the capacity to follow the Palestinian Authority media . . ."
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