Islam Times - Fatah official: Remove Hamas from terrorist list

Islam Times - Fatah supports removing Hamas from global terrorist lists, but insists the PLO must remain the only representative of the Palestinian people, a central committee member said Wednesday.

Amal Hamad said Fatah supports national unity on the Palestinian street, but is concerned that Hamas will announce a "state of Gaza".

"Gaza is part of Palestine, and we will not allow anyone to separate it from the West Bank," Hamad said.

A leader in Hamas, Ismael al-Ashkar, said that most European countries were in direct contact with Hamas, but the issue needed time to be formalized.

"All the Europeans who visited the Gaza Strip said they had a mistake by putting Hamas on the world terrorism list," al-Ashkar said.

Akram Attallah, a political analyst, said it was too early to remove Hamas from the list as the international community had conditions that Hamas had not yet agreed to.

Attallah said Hamas needed a fundamental change in its political approach and ideology to get off the list.