GAZA/WEST BANK: Thousands of Hamas supporters in Gaza rally against Annapolis conference / Israeli border police clash with Palestinian villagers in West Bank

Tens of thousands of Hamas supporters took to the streets of the isolated Gaza Strip on Friday (November 23) to protest the Annapolis peace meeting, calling it the "conference of shame". In the West Bank, Israeli border police clash with Palestinian villagers who protest against the separation barrier. Tens of thousands of Hamas supporters rallied in Gaza (November 23) against the forthcoming Middle East conference on the creation of a Palestinian state, while in the West Bank scores of Palestinians protesting Israel's barrier clashed with border police. Tens of thousands took to the streets of the town of Khan Younis in the Hamas-controlled territory after Friday prayers and rallied against next week's U.S.-hosted meeting in Annapolis, Maryland. The green colour of Hamas flags dominated in the streets, and crowds chanted anti-Israel and pro-Hamas slogans. Muslim women in veils marched separately, some wearing green Hamas headbands and scarves. A small boy stood on the rally stage with Hamas leaders, wearing a green Hamas headband and carrying a mock rifle. The United States has invited about 40 countries -- including Saudi Arabia and Syria, which have no relations with the Jewish state -- to the meeting it hopes will launch negotiations to end the six-decade Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinians are themselves divided between Abbas's Fatah movement, which governs the West Bank, and the Islamist Hamas group, which seized control of the Gaza Strip in June. Hamas opposes the conference, which dismissed Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and Hamas leader deemed "born dead." It was unclear how far the conference will go to tackle the core issues -- borders, security, settlements, the status of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees -- that have defeated previous efforts to end the conflict. Israel continues to build a barrier in and around the West Bank which it says is necessary to prevent Palestinian attacks on Israelis. Palestinians deem it a land grab of territory they hope to have for a future state. Israel rerouted large segments of the barrier, a network of concrete barriers and razor-wire fencing, under a court order after Palestinians called it land confiscation that cut them off from jobs, schools and hospitals. In the West Bank village of Bilin, Palestinian villagers protested near the barrier which they say cuts through their lands. Israel Supreme Court ordered Israeli government in September to reroute a section of the barrier set to cut through the village's farmland and circumvent it instead. Israeli security forces and protesters, including left-wing Israelis and pro-Palestinian activists from abroad, square off in weekly Friday confrontation in Bilin in which demonstrators hurl rocks and border police fire tear gas and rubber bullets. Israel has completed about 60 percent of the 600-km (370 miles) long designated route it started to build in 2002, mostly in the northern West Bank and around Jerusalem. The International Court of Justice says the barrier is illegal because it cuts through land Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war, and should be dismantled. Israel rejects the decision. .

ITN Source | November 24, 2007

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