Last update - 00:00 11/11/2007
MI Chief: Hamas may try to derail peace summit if progress made
By Haaretz Service and The Associated Press
The United States has promised Syria that the issue of the Golan Heights will be brought to the agenda of the upcoming regional peace conference scheduled for later this month, the head of Israeli military intelligence said on Sunday.
Briefing Sunday's weekly cabinet meeting, Major General Amos Yadlin said that the Americans had made the promise in effort to convince Damascus to participate in the summit, which it is hosting in Annapolis, Maryland.
Yadlin also told the cabinet that the radical Islamic Hamas movement could try to violently derail the peace conference if it appears progress is being made toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
He said that a perceived failure of the U.S.-sponsored conference could also spark trouble, with Hamas likely to use that as a springboard for a fresh assault on Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
Hamas opposes peace with Israel and has publicly vowed to work to sabotage the conference.
"A major attack on an Israeli target could force the Israelis into a harsh response, weakening support for a peace deal. Hamas has killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bomb attacks," Yadlin said.
The Islamic militant group violently took control of the Gaza Strip in June, defeating Abbas loyalists in five days of brutal fighting.
Abbas responded by expelling Hamas from the Palestinian government, and has since moved to cement his grip on power in the West Bank, fearing a Hamas challenge there, too.
"Failure of the conference could bring about a serious risk of strengthening the extremists," an Israeli official at the Cabinet meeting quoted Yadlin as saying. "[But] he said he saw Hamas stepping up its efforts to carry out acts of terrorism if Annapolis looks like being a success.
Both Israel and the Western-leaning Abbas administration have been talking down expectations for the meeting, saying it is meant to kick-start dormant peace negotiations rather than come up with an accord like the one reached between Israel and Egypt in 1978 and attempted between Israel and the Palestinians in 2000, both also in Maryland, at the Camp David presidential retreat.
"Annapolis is not Camp David, Annapolis is the beginning of a process," the official quoted Yadlin telling the Cabinet Sunday, speaking on condition of anonymity according to civil service rules.
The official also quoted Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as promising the ministers that he would hold a pre-conference Cabinet debate within the next two weeks and assuring them that although continued deadlock with the Palestinians was not in Israel's interest, he would not be railroaded into concessions.
"There is no commitment to any deadline," Olmert was quoted as saying. "I want to move forward cautiously and responsibly, but I want to move forward."
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