Incoming Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniya presented a new coalition government to parliament on Saturday aimed at ending a turbulent year of bloodshed and international boycott.
GAZA CITY: Incoming Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniya presented a new coalition government to parliament on Saturday aimed at ending a turbulent year of bloodshed and international boycott.
As Haniya reached out to allay Western concerns, he called for a Palestinian state on lands Israel occupied in 1967 and vowed his government would work toward the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
But Haniya also insisted on Palestinians' right to armed resistance, rejecting a key Western condition for ending a crippling aid freeze.
"The government will work with the international community to put an end to the occupation and recover the legitimate rights of our people, foremost among them the creation of an independent state enjoying full sovereignty in the territories occupied in 1967," Haniya said.
He said that the new unity cabinet would respect the resolutions of international legitimacy and the agreements signed by the Palestine Liberation Organization," one of the three Quartet conditions for ending the punishing aid boycott slapped on the Palestinian Authority after Hamas took power last year.
The so-called Quartet of major players in the peace process, the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States, has been calling on the new government to renounce violence and recognize Israel and past peace deals for the flow of aid to resume.
Haniya called on the West to end the aid freeze and said his new government would work towards a prisoner exchange with Israel including Shalit, who was captured by Gaza militants last June.
Israel rejects new Palestinian cabinet, wants aid freeze kept
JERUSALEM: Israel on Saturday rejected contacts with the new Palestinian unity government and urged the West to maintain its boycott against a cabinet that has not recognised the Jewish state's right to exist.
"Israel will not recognise or work with this new government or with its members," government spokeswoman Miri Eisin said.
She spoke shortly after prime minister designate Ismail Haniya unveiled before parliament the programme of the new coalition cabinet that unites his Islamist Hamas movement with the secular Fatah of President Mahmud Abbas.
"The new government continues along the clear line of the preceding one. Unfortunately, there is no recognition of Israel, there is no recognition of past accords with the Palestinian Authority," Eisin said.
"And not only is there no renunciation of terrorism, there is a clear call by the new prime minister to what he calls the right of resistance.
"We expect the international community to firmly stick to its demands concerning the three conditions" for lifting the aid freeze imposed on the Palestinian government a year ago when Hamas came to power, she said.
The so-called Quartet of major players in the Middle East peace process, the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States, had demanded that a new Palestinian government renounce violence and recognise Israel and past peace deals for the aid flow to resume.
But Israeli officials have voiced fears that, out of concern for the unprecedented havoc wreaked on the Palestinian economy, some Quartet members will now end the aid freeze.
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