Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Wednesday insisted there would be no dialogue with Hamas until the latter return Gaza Strip to his authority after seizing the territory in June.
“What Hamas did was a destructive operation which helped those who don’t want to see an independent Palestinian state,” Abbas told journalists after talks with Eygptian President Hosni Mubarak in the Egyptian port of Alexandria.
“There is no dialogue with Hamas until they go back on what they did and return what they took,” he said, according to AFP.
“They know what they took and they know how to return it,” he said of Hamas. Abbas’ words followed a similar declaration by Azzam al-Ahmad, the chief of Fatah’s parliamentary bloc, in the West Bank. “To end the crisis, Hamas must end its putsch in the Gaza Strip and return this territory to the elected and legitimate president Mahmud Abbas,” Ahmad told AFP in Ramallah.
“Afterward, we will be able to sit down immediately and start a national dialogue,” he said.
