Hamas: No concessions over refugees
Hamas head Khaled Meshaal called on Arab leaders at this week's Arab summit not to make concessions on Palestinian refugees.
Tuesday, 27.03.2007.
14:57
Hamas: No concessions over refugees
It added: "he said that conceding legitimate rights such as the right of return and the Palestinian people's right to protection was unacceptable".Meshaal, who spoke to SPA in Algeria, visited Saudi Arabia for talks with Saudi officials on Sunday.
The Arab summit on Wednesday and Thursday will relaunch an Arab initiative which offers Israel normal ties with Arab states in return for full withdrawal from land it seized in the 1967 Middle East war.
The summit is part of a series of diplomatic moves to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and bring the historic Arab-Israeli conflict to an end.
Israel and its U.S. ally have responded positively to the plan to revive the initiative, first adopted by an Arab summit in 2002, but have a number of reservations, including on the question of Palestinian refugees.
The initiative calls for a just solution to the issue of Palestinians displaced by the fighting that saw Israel created in 1948 and their descendents.
The summit's draft resolutions avoid the phrase "right of return" to lands which are now part of the state of Israel, instead talking of a "just solution" and "rejection of all forms of (refugee) settlement" in other countries.
Hamas has refused to recognize Israel and given only vague support for the Arab initiative, but Palestinian officials say Hamas has agreed not to go against the plan during the summit, at the request of Saudi Arabia.
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