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Hamas leader doesn’t want to be sold out

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Palestinian spiritual leader of the opposition group Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin said Monday that the mideast peace summit held in Camp David was doomed to fail the Palestinians during a press conference held at his office in Gaza City, Monday July 17, 2000. Yassin called on the Palestinian delegation to pull out from the mideast peace talks held between Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak at the Camp David summit. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

July 18, 2000 

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of the militant Islamic Hamas group, called on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat Monday to abandon peace talks at Camp David, saying the summit was doomed to fail the Palestinians.

Hamas sees formal peace with the Jewish state as a sellout, and Yassin reiterated the movement's pledge to continue its armed struggle against Israel.

"I consider any agreement that might be reached at Camp David to be a failure because it is not what the Palestinians are looking for," Yassin told reporters.

Both sides at the presidential retreat outside Washington are dealing with the need to make far-reaching concessions, sure to be unpopular with much of their constituencies, on the key issues that divide them: the eventual borders of a Palestinian state, the fate of millions of Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem, which both Israel and the Palestinians claim as their capital.

Any peace deal that forced the Palestinians to give in on these points would not represent the Palestinian people, Yassin said.

"I don't expect that Arafat will do so because he knows it would be the end of him politically," said Yassin.

Also Monday, Avraham Burg, the speaker of Israel's parliament, spoke by phone with Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who called to update him on the summit.

Burg said Barak was not hopeful that the negotiating teams would be able to wrap up an agreement in the next two days. On Wednesday, U.S. President Bill Clinton is scheduled to leave Camp David for a summit of industrialized powers in Japan.

"He (Barak) is not optimistic," Burg told Israel radio, "He said he wants to reach an agreement but that we are not there yet."

Even as Barak negotiates at Camp David, he remains plagued by political problems back home. On Sunday evening, at least 100,000 right-wing protesters, most of them West Bank settlers, massed into a Tel Aviv square to tell Barak they refused to accept broad concessions to the Palestinians.

Later Monday the parliament is to hear two motions of no-confidence in Barak's government, submitted by far-right parties opposed to the summit. The motions are not expected, however, to pass. Several opposition parties have said they would abstain from such a vote, even though they disagree with Barak's policies, because he is abroad on state business.

Meanwhile, Palestinians demonstrated in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, calling for Arafat to stand strong and not to give in to Israel.

In the West Bank town of Jenin, some 300 Palestinian activists from Arafat's Fatah faction marched through the streets, calling for a return of Palestinian refugees to the homes inside Israel that they fled or were driven from in 1948.

Many of the demonstrators fired shots in the air and a 17-year-old from a nearby refugee camp burned an Israeli flag.

In the Gaza Strip, 500 refugees from the Nusseirat camp also rallied for the right of Palestinians to return to their original homes in Israel.