Hamas chief in historic Gaza visit

Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal, left,and senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, right, wave to the crowd upon Meshaal’s arrival in the southern Gaza Strip yesterday. Inset, Khaled Meshaal prays upon his arrival.Photo: AFPAgencies

Hamas leader in exile Khaled Meshaal made his first visit to Gaza yesterday, kissing the ground and saying he hoped he would one day die a “martyr” in the Palestinian territory.

After his seven-vehicle convoy swept across the border from Egypt, Meshaal got out and kissed Palestinian soil before embracing Gaza’s Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya.

Khaled Meshaal also called his first visit to the Gaza Strip his “third birth”.

He said his previous two “births” were the day he survived an assassination attempt by Israeli agents in Jordan in 1997, and his actual birth in 1956.

Meshaal was born in the West Bank in 1956. He moved to Kuwait after the 1967 Middle East war and later Jordan, where his involvement with Hamas began.

His visit follows a ceasefire that ended days of violence between Israel and Hamas that killed 170 Palestinians and six Israelis. The Islamist militant group has governed Gaza since 2007.

Meanwhile, an Israeli official told the BBC that no guarantees for Meshaal’s safety in Gaza had been requested and none had been given.

Israel, the US and the EU consider Hamas a terrorist organisation.

For the centrepiece of his three-day tour, Meshaal is scheduled to address the rally in Gaza City, where a stage has been set up with a replica of a type of rocket Hamas has fired into Israel.

He is also expected to discuss reconciliation moves with the Fatah movement, which Hamas removed from Gaza by force in 2007 after winning elections there. Fatah now rules parts of the West Bank.

Hamas was created in 1987 after the beginning of the first intifada – or Palestinian uprising – against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Under its charter, Hamas is committed to the destruction of Israel. But the group has also offered a 10-year truce in return for a complete Israeli withdrawal from territories it occupied in 1967.

Source: The Daily Star