Islamist Palestinians blast Arab League for peace overture

Palestinian Islamist movements rebuked the Arab League for the willingness it expressed Monday to consider land swaps with Israel in a final two-state solution based on the 1967 lines.

On Tuesday evening, Hamas expressed “grave concern” over statements made by Qatari Prime Minister Sheik Hamad Bin Jassem Al Thani in Washington, allowing for “mutually agreed” and “minor” land swaps between Israel and the future Palestinian state.

“Our long experience with the Zionist enemy has taught us that the enemy searches for more concessions on our rights and national principles,” the statement, published on the movement’s official website, continued.

“The occupation does not want peace, but merely wishes to impose surrender on our people and nation. It attempts to buy time by speaking about the illusion of peace while imposing a policy of fait accompli.”

Hamas’s statement came amid an enthusiastic endorsement of the Arab League move by US Secretary of State John Kerry. Speaking at the State Department on Tuesday, Kerry acknowledged the existence of “hurdles to clear,” but added that the Arab League overture could not be underestimated.

“We are prepared to make peace now in 2013,” Kerry said.

Hamas fervently opposes negotiations and security coordination with Israel, an issue believed to be at the heart of its stalled reconciliation talks with rival movement Fatah.

“Has the Arab League turned into an American think tank or a branch of pro-Israel lobby AIPAC?” wondered Islamic Jihad leader Khaled Al-Batsh on his Facebook page Tuesday.

‘We are not real estate speculators. We refuse a land exchange because the entire land is ours’

“An Arab League delegation to Washington renewed its commitment to a  new Arab Balfour [declaration] for Israel,” he continued.

“Rather than relying on the [Arab] nations during the Arab Spring to liberate Jerusalem and purify Palestine of the Zionists, official Arab [delegates] expressed their willingness to adopt a land swap plan as part of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement. This would mean the existence of large settlement blocs under Israeli control.”

Hamas’s politburo deputy director Moussa Abu Marzouk wrote on his Facebook page that that although the Palestinian issue “is as Arab as it is Islamic,” the Arab League representatives had no right to forgo one inch of land to Israel.

“We are not real estate speculators,” wrote Abu Marzouk late Tuesday night. “We refuse a land exchange because the entire land is ours.”

To add insult to injury, wrote Abu Marzouk, Palestinian concessions will never be met by similar Israeli ones.

“Have the Zionists welcomed the Arab initiative, honoring us thereby? Have they met any Arab or even Palestinian concession with a similar one?” he wondered. “The recent concessions will only attract new pressure and more limitless concessions.”

Islamists were not the only ones to criticize the Arab move, however. On Wednesday, Arab nationalist daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi published an editorial titled “an Arab concession that made Livni happy” in which it claimed that recognition of Israeli settlement blocs will cut Jerusalem off from its Palestinian surroundings.

“The Arab foreign ministers who traveled to Washington a few days ago under the banner of ‘restarting’ the Arab Peace Initiative have delivered a large concession which was not required of them,” wrote the editor.

“The warm and swift welcome by Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni reflects the extent of this concession,” he continued.

“It is unfortunate that the Palestinian Authority is remaining silent; a silence which indicates agreement on these kinds of initiatives which may turn the Palestinian issue into a matter of economics, jobs and roads, rather than the issue of an oppressed people that wants to retrieve its land and establish an independent state on its entire occupied land.”