The militant Islamist group Hamas warned Israel today of a third uprising if it failed with the United States and Europe to make progress towards a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders.
Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal told a news conference in Cairo Western powers would have six months to seize on "the historic chance" to settle the region's longest conflict once a national unity cabinet is formed between Hamas and rival group Fatah.
But forming the government is subject to talks between the two groups and faces several obstacles, including obtaining guarantees to ensure the end of a Western financial ban on the Palestinian Authority once the cabinet takes power. Shortly before Meshaal's ultimatum, Palestinian militants fired rockets into Israel, residents said.
Israeli artillery shells later hit a house and a car in the northern Gaza Strip, wounding at least two people, hospital officials said. Israeli forces also killed a Palestinian militant in the strip on Saturday, and in a separate incident overnight, they shot dead an unidentified Palestinian while he was approaching the strategic Karni border crossing.
"We give them six months and the real political horizon will open up," said Meshaal, in Cairo to discuss efforts to form the unity government and a possible prisoner exchange with Israel. If progress is not made, Meshaal said, the Palestinian Authority could collapse and "the Palestinian people will close all the political ledgers and come out in a third intifada (uprising) project and the struggle will be wide open."
Palestinians began an uprising in 2000 in which they carried out frequent attacks inside Israel. There has been a sharp reduction in such strikes in the Jewish state since a ceasefire was declared in early 2005. Meshaal gave few details of his negotiations in Cairo on a unity government, seen by Palestinians as a way to end the financial sanctions imposed after Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections in January.
One issue delaying the agreement with Fatah, he said, was his group's rejection to the idea of a cabinet of technocrats based on competence regardless of their party or factional affiliations -- an idea meant to keep Hamas at a distance from the levers of power.