Erekat asks Hamas government to recognize Israel for people's benefit

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat stressed on Wednesday that the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas)-led government must recognize Israel for the benefit of the people.

"Since Hamas won the parliament, it should ask its 24 ministers in the parliament to recognize Israel to save the Palestinian people from destruction and damnation," Erekat, also a senior aide to President Mahmoud Abbas from the moderate Fatah movement, told Voice of Palestine radio.

Erekat made the remarks one day after the failure of a Qatari initiative to boost the formation of a new national unity government in the Palestinian territories following Hamas' rebuff of the key clauses of recognizing Israel and the two-state solution.

Erekat highly commented statements made by Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, who called on Prime Minister Ismail Haneya of Hamas to "find a solution for his own if he doesn't accept the Arab Peace initiative."

"This is a big speech concerning the history of the Palestinian cause," Erekat said, adding it was the first time since the 1948 that such statements were said for the Palestinians.

He noted that President Abbas had been giving opportunities to the Hamas-led government since April with hope that it would moderate its stance and maintain international relations.

Erekat warned of "a collapse" that might hit the Palestinian territories, saying the Palestinians would lose 83 percent of the public jobs by the end of the 2008 if the current situation remained unchanged, and the cost of such loses would be around 5, 400 million U.S. dollars.

Abbas and Haneya reached an initial agreement on forming a coalition government based on the Prisoners' Document of National Accordance, which calls for establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, to replace the incumbent Hamas-led one.

The move was seen as an effort to get the Palestinian territories out of an economic and political crisis triggered by the West and Israel's cutting off their direct aid due to the ruling Hamas' refusal to meet the conditions of recognizing Israel, renouncing violence and respecting previous agreements signed with Israel.

However, the talks was deadlocked as Hamas remained adamant on its stance of refusing to recognize Israel.

Source: Xinhua