Hamas Gives Arafat His Due in Sealing Pact
PLO chief Yasser Arafat has triumphed over the divided Palestinian opposition to the Middle East peace pact, an official of the militant Islamic group Hamas said Thursday.
Hamas, which has waged a campaign of suicide bombings that has killed scores of Israelis, could only obstruct the process but could not destroy it, Mustafa Liddawi, the Lebanon representative of Hamas, said.
“In the total sum, Arafat has triumphed over the opposition,” Liddawi said, hours before the signing in Washington of the West Bank accord between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel.
“The [peace] process represents the international will, and it will not fall in the years to come. . . . It is much bigger than us, but we are not obliged to become desperate. . . . Our military operations are capable of obstructing it,” Liddawi said.
Liddawi said opponents of the 1993 PLO-Israel peace deal could not win because they had failed to unite against it.
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