Jerusalem – Hamas and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas joined Monday in bitter criticism of Israel for moving to cut ties with the new Palestinian government.
At the same time, a senior aide to acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the incoming Israeli government would speed up its timetable for uprooting remote Jewish settlements in the West Bank, in effect seeking to draw Israel’s borders by 2008.
The Israeli military, meanwhile, kept up a steady barrage of artillery on the northern Gaza Strip. Palestinian officials said an 8-year-old girl was killed and her pregnant mother injured when a shell hit their house.
The military said its strikes are meant to quell rocket fire aimed at Israel by Palestinian militants.
Intensifying the volatile atmosphere in Gaza, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to protest a temporary hiatus in direct U.S. and European Union aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian government, which was sworn in two weeks ago.
In recent weeks, Israeli officials have been taking steps to curtail ties with the Palestinians because Hamas, which swept to victory in Jan. 28 elections, does not recognize Israel’s right to exist.
The latest of those measures came Monday, when the Israeli military formally ended its cooperation with Palestinian security forces by closing a liaison office in the West Bank town of Jericho.
A day earlier, Olmert’s most senior aides approved a plan for severing most links with the Palestinian government. That proposal allows continued contact with Abbas, who is considered a moderate, but aims to isolate Hamas.
“Decisions of the Israeli government to isolate and harm us … are in total contradiction to agreements we signed with them,” Abbas said in the West Bank town of Ramallah. Hamas spokesman Sami abu Zuhri, in a statement issued in Gaza, called Israel’s steps “a declaration of war and a failed effort to sow internal disputes among Palestinians.”
