GAZA: Haniyeh says that Hamas taking control of Gaza was for the better as far as Gazans are concerned

Hamas's leader in the Gaza Strip has no regrets about seizing control of the enclave last month and is ready to talk to Palestinian rivals and to offer Israel a truce in order to bring his people security and prosperity. But Ismail Haniyeh, who says he is still prime minister and faces the responsibility of feeding 1.5 million Gazans, stressed he will not drop political demands to ease a blockade of all but humanitarian essentials that has tightened around them since the Islamists routed Western-backed, secular forces a month ago. "Today, the siege is tighter. Why this siege on the Gaza Strip? Is it because we want to end chaos and anarchy?" he told Reuters in an interview at his office in Gaza City. "This mistaken policy must be reconsidered ... But we will certainly not bend political positions in return for food. Food and human rights must not be subject to political blackmail." Israel and international powers imposed economic sanctions on the Palestinian Authority when Haniyeh formed a government after Hamas won a parliamentary election 18 months ago. Those were lifted on the West Bank after President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed Haniyeh on June 14 following Hamas's defeat of Abbas's Fatah forces in Gaza. But their effect has deepened on the coastal enclave, due in part to Israeli and Egyptian refusal to deal with Hamas militants now controlling border crossings. The United Nations and World Bank have warned of economic and humanitarian disaster if trade routes are not reopened, but Israel and the West insist they will shun Hamas while it refuses to accept Israel's right to exist and to renounce violence. Haniyeh, a 44-year-old scholar once jailed in Israel, said Hamas still wanted a state in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem but was also still offering a "comprehensive, reciprocal and simultaneous calm" now with Israel, as well as "long-term truce" with the Jewish state if Palestinian demands were met. That position does not satisfy Hamas's opponents. Haniyeh insisted the movement was right to oust Fatah forces, whom he blamed for conflict and instability in Gaza, and had no regrets that Abbas's renewed agreements with Israel and Western powers were now unlocking concessions for the West Bank in the form of funding and the release of Fatah prisoners. Asked if he regretted last month's seizure of power in Gaza, which some analysts believe took Hamas somewhat by surprise, he said: "The Gaza Strip today is more secure and safer. The result the Palestinian people are experiencing confirms that the crisis was caused by a group of security chiefs. If some people in the Palestinian area want to bet on the American administration and bet on the Israelis, let them place their bets on that square," he said. "We will choose the square of our people, our nation and the rights of our people. Time will tell that it is a grave mistake to bet on those others." Nonetheless, he said, he was open to "dialogue without conditions" with Abbas and Haniyeh, the bulky, bearded and often smiling face of a movement whose overall leader lives in exile in Syria, insisted that Hamas sought peaceful solutions. Rocket fire by Hamas and other militants from Gaza was, he said, a response to Israeli raids and would end if Israel did likewise: "Resistance has always been defensive," he said. "If the Israeli occupation stops its attacks ... then certainly there would be no justification for any action of this kind." He also repeated his willingness to free an Israeli soldier captured a year ago, in return for jailed militants: "We are more eager to resolve this issue than the Israelis," he said. "We are looking for an honourable deal." Sitting in a modest office in an anonymous streetfront building a few blocks from the Mediterranean, Haniyeh is keen to stress what many in Gaza give Hamas credit for -- bringing an end to a year of a bloody factional power struggle: "We are not acting as if Gaza is an independent state," he said. "But until understandings can be reached among the Palestinians, the administration of the Gaza Strip will be characterised by the upholding of law and order, the sovereignty of the judiciary, by equality and justice, by ending injustice, spreading security and ending bribery and corrupt monopolies." Haniyeh rejected suggestions from Israel and Washington that Gaza under Hamas would become a satellite for a hostile Iran and Syria and a haven for al Qaeda: "There is no al Qaeda in the Gaza Strip and talk of Gaza becoming a foothold for al Qaeda is an invitation to international hostilities," he said. "Neither Syria, nor Qatar nor Iran and nor any other Arab or Islamic country had anything to do with what happened in Gaza." Previous Hamas leaders have been killed by Israel, which threatened recently that Haniyeh himself was not safe. Asked about his own security, the Islamist leader gave another smile: "We have complete faith in God and so these threats do not frighten us," he said. "Everything is in God's hands."

ITN Source | July 16, 2007

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