TEL AVIV — The Palestinian Fatah movement has not demanded that Hamas recognize the State of Israel, Ahmad Guneim, a member of Fatah’s revolutionary council, told Breitbart Jerusalem just hours after it was announced that Hamas and Fatah had reached a reconciliation deal on Thursday.
“We in Fatah will never demand that Hamas recognize Israel,” Guneim said. “The opposite, in fact. We will demand that Hamas not recognize Israel as long as Israel doesn’t recognize a Palestinian state and the right of the Palestinians to a country of their own.”
Despite Guneim’s claims, Israel has offered the Palestinians a state numerous times only to be rejected by the Palestinian Authority.
The reconciliation signed between Hamas and Fatah in Cairo aims to close the door on a split that has lasted for over a decade after Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip by force, pushing out the Palestinian Authority and its forces in 2007.
“During one of the visits I made to Qatar when I met with Khaled Meshal, who was the leader of Hamas, I asked Meshal never to accept the demand to recognize Israel,” Guneim told Breitbart Jerusalem. “The PLO recognized Israel but [Israel] never recognized a Palestinian state. In the framework of Oslo, they recognized the PLO, which is an organization, but they didn’t recognize a Palestinian state, but the PLO still recognized Israel. They gave Israel a free prize.”
According to Guneim, the Fatah movement, under the leadership of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, won’t recognize Israel either “as long as Israel doesn’t recognize a Palestinian state.”
“It’s true that Fatah’s platform says we do accept the agreements signed by the PLO, and among these agreements are the Oslo Accords that recognize the state of Israel, but that’s it. There won’t be any Fatah recognition of Israel as long as Israel doesn’t recognize a Palestinian state,” he said.
Guneim said that Palestinian Authority security personnel who have arrived in the Gaza Strip won’t take any action to disarm Hamas even as part of security coordination with Israel.
“We’ve stopped the security coordination in the West Bank and we won’t agree to begin again if Israel doesn’t fulfill our 27 demands from the Oslo Accords and we won’t give any security services to Israel in Gaza either,” said Guneim. “We want to return to security coordination as part of an inclusive political agreement in which Israel fulfills its obligations, but we won’t agree for the security coordination to be the sole survivor of the Oslo Accords and the only thing that works.
“They want the Palestinian Authority security forces to destroy weapons caches in the Gaza Strip or prevent rocket fire in order to comply with our demands – the political demands – at our request, but we won’t stop Hamas or others just because Israel asked. It will only happen in the framework of a comprehensive political agreement.”
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