Hamas leader Zahar rejects PA peace talks with 'brutal occupier'

A top Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip rejected compromise with Israel in a fiery speech Wednesday, a day after gunmen killed four Israelis in a strong reminder that the Islamic militant group refuses to be ignored in any Mideast deal.

President Barack Obama denounced the West Bank ambush as he launched a two-day summit marking the first Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in nearly two years.

	Mahmoud Zahar.
	Photo by: AP

Hamas has claimed responsibility for Tuesday's shootings, a vivid reminder that the Iranian-backed group may be locked out of the peace negotiations but remains a key player in determining their outcome.

In an address to Hamas members, Gaza strongman Mahmoud Zahar said the movement would resist peace efforts and criticized the Palestinian president for joining the negotiations.

"Today marks the start of direct negotiations between someone who has no right to represent the Palestinian people and the brutal occupier, to provide a cover for Judaizing Jerusalem and stealing the land," Zahar said.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been locked in a fierce rivalry with Hamas since the group seized Gaza from his forces in a violent takeover in 2007, leaving him only in control of the West Bank.

In a swift response to the shooting, Abbas' forces rounded up 250 low- and mid-level Hamas supporters throughout the West Bank in what the group said was the largest sweep in recent memory. Hamas officials called the roundup arbitrary and an act of treason.

"The enemy of the Palestinian people is the Zionist enemy," Zahar said.

Zahar rejected the idea of compromise with Israel, saying that liberating all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River - a reference to Israel's destruction - is a moral and religious duty. He said Palestinians must not abandon armed resistance against Israeli occupation.

Despite Zahar's tough words, it's unclear whether the militants will try to derail the negotiations with more attacks or whether the shooting was an isolated incident.

The group - shunned by the West and Israel as a terror organization - possesses a large arsenal of rockets that it could launch at Israeli border towns. But Hamas has largely refrained from attacks since suffering heavy losses in an Israeli offensive early last year.

We are not talking about revealing our cards now, said Hamas official Ahmed Yousef.

The main Mideast mediators - the United States, the United Nations, Europe and Russia - have not spelled out how Gaza fits into their peace plans.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak wrote in an op-ed piece in The New York Times on Tuesday that reconciliation between Hamas and Abbas' Fatah movement is critical to achieving a two-state solution and renewed an offer of Egyptian mediation.