Hamas urges end to Obama rhetoric

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/180805.html

The Palestinian resistance movement of Hamas has called on US President Barack Obama to take concrete steps over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and refrain from sloganeering.

"What Obama needs to do is not to add slogans but to take concrete steps to protect the rights of the Palestinian people and the Arab nation," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told AFP on Thursday.

His remarks come on the heels of Obama's May 19 speech on Washington's Middle East policies, in which the US president pledged his commitment to seek a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Obama, however, warned Palestinians that they would never gain independence by denying the Israeli regime the “right to exist,” claiming that efforts to “de-legitimize Israel” would fail.

The US president also insisted that a Palestinian bid for the UN recognition of an independent Palestinian state would not work.

Acting Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas has said he will ask the United Nations General Assembly to recognize a Palestinian state in September.

More than 100 countries have so far officially recognized Palestine as a state based on the 1967 borders, the boundaries that existed before Israel captured East al-Quds (Jerusalem), the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile, senior Hamas official Mahmoud Zahar said that Obama adopted an Israeli position in an effort to boost himself in preparation for the election campaign for next year's presidential election in the US.

Zahar added that Obama was trying to portray Israel as the side that seeks peace and negotiations.

In his latest speech intended to address recent uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, Obama again restated total American backing of the Israeli regime despite the growing public animosity in the Muslim world towards the US for its support of Tel Aviv as well as despotic rulers in the region.