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Hamas TV takes aim at Palestinian rivals

Posted on: Tue January 12, 2010

RAMALLAH, West Bank/GAZA CITY: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday said for the first time that he might restart peace negotiations with Israel if it froze settlement expansion for a fixed period.  We will not accept the relaunching of negotiations without a complete halt to settlements, including in al-Quds, for a fixed period, Abbas told reporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah. It was the first time Abbas appeared to accept some kind of temporary settlement freeze, after months in which he insisted on a total halt to settlement growth pending a final agreement on borders. The United States has for months been pressing Israel and the Palestinians to relaunch peace negotiations suspended during the Gaza war in December 2008 and January 2009.     After months of US pressure, Israel s hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a 10-month moratorium on new construction in the occupied West Bank but excluded public buildings and projects already under way. The moratorium also excluded annexed Arab east al-Quds, which Israel considers part of its eternal, indivisible capital but which the Palestinians have demanded as the capital of their promised state.    The Palestinians rejected the moratorium when Netanyahu announced it in November as being insufficient for the relaunch of talks.     The presence of a half million Israelis in more than 100 settlements scattered across the occupied West Bank including east al-Quds has been one of the thorniest issues in previous rounds of peace talks. Meanwhile, the Hamas-run Al-Aqsa TV channel plans to release a series of cartoons portraying Palestinian security forces in the West Bank as boot-licking lackeys of Israel, a network official said Tuesday. The cartoons will be modelled on a six-minute pilot in which a character wearing the uniform of Western-backed security forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is portrayed as a mindless toady of bloodthirsty Israelis. We are preparing films and cartoons to broadcast on Al-Aqsa at the start of next month focusing on the disgraceful practices of the (Palestinian) Authority, the official said on condition of anonymity.    Hamas and Abbas s Fatah movement have been bitterly divided since the Islamist group s bloody seizure of Gaza in June 2007, which confined Abbas s authority to the Israeli-occupied West Bank.    Since then the two groups have accused each other of arbitrary arrests, torture and persecution as unity talks have repeatedly collapsed.     Hamas has lashed out at Abbas s security forces for cracking down on armed groups in the West Bank, accusing them of serving Israel s interests. In the pilot cartoon, entitled A Special Mission and first aired earlier this month, the main character, named Bahlul (Arabic for buffoon), shines an Israeli soldier s boots and kisses his feet when ordered to do so. The character tells the Israeli soldier his job is to protect the settlements in the West Bank and says he would arrest his relatives, shoot his brother or divorce his wife if the Israelis ordered him to.

Courtesy : The News

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