Hamas to resist Kadima policy
Hamas tonight said it would resist Kadima's platform that calls for a partial withdrawal from the West Bank, a strengthening of large settlement blocs there and drawing Israel's borders by 2010.
“We view this plan as a very dangerous one because it represents a real liquidation of the Palestinian cause,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said, reacting to tonight’s exit poll.
The vote was billed as a historic referendum on Olmert’s vision of the future of the West Bank after 39 years of military occupation.
Under Olmert’s plan, Israel’s partially completed West Bank separation barrier, expected to swallow about 8% of the area, would become the new border within four years, with some alterations. Settlement blocs on the disputed Israeli side of the barrier would be beefed up, while tens of thousands of settlers living on the other side would be uprooted.
“We will determine the line of the security fence, and we will make sure that no Jewish settlements will be left on the other side of the fence,” Olmert wrote Tuesday in an op-ed piece published in the Yediot Ahronot daily. “Drawing the final borders is our obligation as leaders and as a society.”
