Hamas rejects Al-Qaeda criticism over elections

DOHA: Hamas political chief Khaled Meshaal, reacting to a rhetorical broadside from Al-Qaeda, said on Wednesday that the Palestinian government would fuse power with resistance in the face of a "foreign plot".   

"Hamas is confronting a foreign plot that aims for it to fail," but it is "determined to wed power and resistance," said Meshaal on the sidelines of a meeting in Doha of Islamist and nationalist Arabs.   

"Palestinians always retain the option of resistance," he added, rejecting criticism levelled at Hamas the day before by Al-Qaeda's number two Ayman al-Zawahiri.   

In a video statement, Osama bin Laden's top deputy implicitly criticised Hamas for contesting elections at the start of this year that gave the Islamist group control of the self-rule government in the occupied territories.   

He argued that jihad, not elections, would liberate Palestinian lands now occupied by Israel.   

Zawahiri also took a broader swipe at "those trying to liberate the land of Islam through elections" -- a charge that could cover participants in this year's elections in US-occupied Iraq.   

Meshaal, the head of Hamas's political bureau who lives in exile in Damascus, said he did not want to engage in a "polemic" with Zawahiri.   

He added that he hoped that the fragile ceasefire in the Gaza Strip would lead to "dialogue" between Hamas and the rival Fatah party, led by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, who has called for elections to be held to resolve a violence-scarred political crisis between the two factions.   

The ceasefire held for a second day Thursday as crowds gathered outside the Palestinian parliament building in Gaza to urge Hamas and Fatah to overcome their differences in the face of a freeze on much-needed Western aid.   

"There is a strong will among the Palestinians to avoid internal confrontations," Meshaal said. "There is no alternative to forming a government of national unity."   

Clashes between Hamas and Fatah supporters have left 14 people dead since Saturday.   

Several Hamas leaders, plus Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, took part in the two-day Doha conference that brought together some 270 delegates from 18 Arab states.   

The biannual conference, taking place outside Beirut for the first time since it was launched in 1994, has been focusing on developments in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.