REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, DOHA - Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said the de facto recognition of a sovereign Palestinian state should be seen alongside Gaza's latest conflict with Israel as a single, bold strategy that could empower all Palestinians. Meshaal strongly backed the diplomatic initiative by Palestinian Authority President Abbas to upgrade Palestinian status at the United Nations to observer state which the General assembly endorsed on Thursday in New York.
Diplomatically, this puts the stateless Palestinians on a par with the Holy See, but politically it would help "unify Palestinian national efforts" as part of the reconciliation process with Abbas's nationalist Fatah movement, Meshaal said. "I told Abou Mazen (Abbas) we want this move to be part of a national Palestinian strategy" that includes "the (armed) resistance which excelled in Gaza and gave an example of the ability of the Palestinian people to resist and steadfastly confront the occupier", a confident Meshaal said.
"I am optimistic", Meshaal said, "there is a new mood that allows us to achieve reconciliation". Dressed in a black suit and an open neck shirt, he was speaking at a hotel in Doha, where he has lived since leaving Syria earlier this year.
Meshaal said the recent war which claimed 162 Palestinian lives and five Israelis was concluded on terms set by the Palestinian Islamist movement and ended its isolation, creating a new mood that could lead to reconciliation with Abbas's Fatah.
"When we reconcile, unite and end the divisions and have one political marja'eya (the Islamic word for leadership) and one political system, then we will be stronger and better and we can achieve more, and our response to the Israeli aggression in all its forms will be better", the Hamas politburo leader said.
The Fatah controlled PA in the West Bank was expelled from Gaza after Hamas won a bloody civil war in 2007, after emerging as the victors in the 2006 Palestinian general elections. Meshaal, who survived a Mossad assassination attempt in Amman in 1997 when Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was last in power, has been reenergized politically by the Arab Spring uprisings that have swept the region and installed a string of sympathetic Islamist leaders.
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