Hamas rebuffs comparison by Abbas to Hezbollah terror group

Hamas on Saturday rebuffed recent statements by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas likening the Gaza-based terror organization’s military wing to the militia of the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah.

Amid ongoing reconciliation talks between rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah, Abbas, who heads the Fatah-dominated PA, said the terror group in control of the Gaza Strip must give up its weapons before any unity government could be formed.

“I won’t accept the reproduction of the Hezbollah experience in Lebanon” in Gaza, Abbas said in an interview late last Monday with the Egyptian news station CBC.

On Saturday, Hamas spokesperson and political bureau member Hasam Bardan pushed back against Abbas’s comparison.

“It is not logical to compare any regional situation to the Palestinian situation, neither the case of Hezbollah nor anyone else. We are a people living under occupation,” Bardan told the Palestinian daily Al-Quds in an interview.

“Our cause is a national liberation issue… So there is no comparison between our experience as Palestinians and the experience of any other people living in a state naturally,” he added.

The terror group Hamas has ruled Gaza since a violent overthrow of the Palestinian Authority in 2007, but last month agreed in principle to hand over civilian rule after Egyptian mediation.

Israel forcefully removed thousands of settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and left the enclave to the Palestinians. The Jewish state, along with Egypt, still retains a strict blockade around the Strip to prevent the terror group, which has fought three conflicts with Israel since 2007, from gathering weapons.

Bardan said the issue of Hamas’s weapons was not brought up in past unity talks between the Palestinian factions.

Since the launch of Palestinian negotiations to end the ten-year rift earlier this month, Hamas has been adamant that it would not even discuss disarmament, leading many analysts to argue the reconciliation effort would fail as several others have in the past.

On Wednesday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh made the distinction between weapons of the state, which would be under the control of the PA, and weapons of the “resistance,” and said that giving up the latter was not up for discussion.

Hezbollah, which is part of the Lebanese government but retains its own army, also refers to its military as the “resistance,” which was historically formed to fight Israel, though the group now fights in a number of conflicts across the Middle East.

Last week ministers of the PA returned to their offices in the Gaza Strip.

On Tuesday, Hamas and Fatah are set to continue the negotiation process in Cairo.