WEST BANK (Dispatches) – Palestinian resistance movements Hamas and Islamic Jihad have strongly condemned the recent meeting between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the Zionist war minister Benny Gantz describing it as a “stab in the back” of the Palestinian nation and their cause.
Hamas spokesman Abd al-Latif Qanou said in a statement on Monday that the meeting was “a stab in the back of the Palestinian people and what they have sacrificed. It is a betrayal of the blood of the martyrs.”
He added that the meeting reflects the continued downfall of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA) and the “abandonment of national values, as well as the beautification of the face of the occupation.”
Hazem Qassem, another Hamas spokesman, said that Palestinians rejected and condemned the meeting, “which is strange to the national spirit of the Palestinian people.”
Qassem said that such meetings showed that the PA leadership was continuing to live under the illusion that it can achieve anything through the “failed peace process.”
He also accused Abbas of “encouraging Arab countries to normalize with Israel” by meeting the senior Zionist regime official.
“This weakens the Palestinian stance that rejects normalization,” Qassem said.
Moreover, the Islamic Jihad movement said that the meeting came against the backdrop of the “crimes of the occupation, its siege and its aggression” on the Palestinians.
“The meeting between Abbas and Gantz is a stab to our people,” said the Islamic Jihad spokesman Tareq Silmi.
He added, “The blood of the children killed by the occupation army on the orders of Gantz is still on the ground and has not dried up yet.”
Silmi accused the PA and Abbas of “turning their back on national consensus, and setting conditions that serve the occupation for the resumption of national dialogue, while they race to meet the enemy leaders and put their hands in the hands stained with innocent blood.”
Separately, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) said that the Abbas-Gantz meeting was a “continuation of the policy of compromising the rights of the Palestinian people.”
Eyad Awadallah, a senior PFLP official, said that the meeting was a “continuation of the policy of futile negotiations and presenting more concessions to the regime of crime and killing.”
He accused Abbas of walking away from the Palestinian national consensus and violating the resolutions of Palestinian institutions that called for severing ties with the Zionist regime.