HAMAS ON THE DISENGAGEMENT

Hamas leader: Gaza withdrawal - ”beginning of the end for Israel”
Speaking to al-Hayat newspaper, Mashaal was quoted as saying on Tuesday that the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip as “the beginning of the end for the Zionist program in the region.”

The Hamas leader reiterated the movement’s commitment to the calm with Israel until the end of the current year, but added the “resistance is a strategic choice, because the withdrawal from Gaza is the first step in the way to complete liberation.”

The Damascus-based official stressed that “Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wants the Gaza exit to be the first and last, and the payment for the continued control in the West Bank, settlement construction, wall construction, and the annulment of any possibility of establishing a Palestinian state within the framework of the Zionist project to end the Palestinian issue with the unlimited US support,” adding “We, however, see the withdrawal as first step for full liberation and achieving all of our legitimate rights. Today Gaza and tomorrow the West Bank and later every inch of the land.”

Massive Hamas demo celebrates Israel pullout.
KHAN YUNIS, Gaza Strip (AFP) - Thousands of supporters of Islamist fundamentalist movement Hamas gathered en masse in Khan Yunis to celebrate the coming end of Israel’s 38-year occupation of the Gaza Strip.

The demonstrators rallied near an Israeli army checkpoint between the depressed southern Gaza town and the main Jewish settlement bloc of Gush Katif, but Palestinian police held the crowd back from approaching the roadblock.

Masked members of Hamas’s armed Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, which has been responsible for most anti-Israeli attacks during the near five-year Palestinian uprising, carried homemade rockets, green Hamas and Palestinian flags.