Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predicted Friday that the recently re-launched peace talks in Washington between Israel and the Palestinian Authority would fail, and urged the Palestinians to continue with their armed resistance to Israeli occupation.
"The fate of Palestine will be decided in Palestine and through resistance and not in Washington," Ahmadinejad said Friday while addressing an annual pro-Palestinian rally in Tehran to mark al-Quds (Jerusalem) Day.
The al-Quds Day is an annual event held in Iran to mark a show of support for Palestinians resisting the Israeli occupation of their land. The event was founded in 1979 and is held every year on the last Friday of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan.
Ahmadinejad was also critical of Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian leaders for participating in the US-mediated peace talks, saying: "What do they want to negotiate about? Who are they representing? What are they going to talk about?"
"Who gave them the right to sell a piece of Palestinian land? The people of Palestine and the people of the region will not allow them to sell even an inch of Palestinian soil to the enemy. The negotiations are stillborn and doomed," the Iranian President added in his nationally televised remarks.
Ahmadinejad's angry remarks came a day after US-brokered Middle East peace talks resumed in Washington after nearly two years. The negotiations are aimed at finding an amicable solution to the decades-long Palestine-Israeli conflict.
During Thursday's negotiations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton agreed to begin working on a framework agreement for permanent status.
The purpose of a framework agreement is to establish the fundamental compromises necessary to enable them to trash out a comprehensive treaty that would end the conflict and establish lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The parties also agreed to work towards an atmosphere of trust that would be conducive to reaching a final agreement.
U.S. Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George Mitchell said both sides agreed to meet again on September 14 and 15 in the Middle East and roughly every other fortnight thereafter, involving the United States.
Mitchell added that Abbas and Netanyahu expressed their intention to approach the negotiations in good faith and with a seriousness of purpose. They also agreed that the negotiations must be treated with utmost sensitivity and kept private for them to succeed.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the Obama administration's stand clear stating that the U.S. "will be an active and sustained partner" in the talks, but that it would not impose a solution.
Opening the negotiations at the Department of State, Clinton called upon leaders of both sides to capitalize on "the opportunity to end this conflict and the decades of enmity between your peoples once and for all."
Palestine authority President Abbas has been demanding guarantees on borders and a freeze on all settlement activities as pre-conditions to resume talks, and has warned that the talks could collapse if Israel resumed settlement construction in West Bank after the 10-month building freeze ends on September 26.
While Netanyahu acknowledged that true and lasting peace "will be achieved only with mutual and painful concessions from both sides," Abbas called on the Israeli government "to move forward with its commitment to end all settlement activities and completely lift the embargo over the Gaza Strip."
Despite the optimism shown by the participants in the peace negotiations, Hamas, the rulers of the Gaza Strip, has voiced its objection to the talks and threatened to launch fresh attacks on Israeli targets as a sign of protest.
Earlier, fighters belonging to the military wing of Hamas had shot dead four Israelis in the West Bank town of Hebron hours before the re-launch of direct talks. The group carried out dozens of suicide attacks against Israel since 2000.
Hamas, a radical Islamist group, came to power in the Gaza Strip in June 2007, ousting the secularist Fatah party led by Mahmoud Abbas. Israel and the West consider Hamas a terrorist organization over its refusal to give up violence and recognize Israel, and refuses to engage in negotiations with the group.
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