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Palestinian groups demonstrate against Geneva initiative
Khaleej Times, (AFP)
30 November 2003
RAFAH, Gaza Strip - Some 300 demonstrators blocked a Palestinian delegation heading to Geneva for the signing of an unofficial peace agreement from leaving the Gaza Strip Sunday, witnesses reported.
A scuffle erupted at the Rafah crossing point between the southern Gaza Strip and Egypt when a small delegation of officials due to attend Monday’s ceremony in Geneva arrived, the witnesses said.
The protestors gathered at the crossing included members from the National and Islamic Forces, an umbrella group representing all Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as well as the mainstream Fatah party.
Among the small delegation were at least two officials from the FIDA party (Palestinian Democratic Union), a Fatah splinter movement founded by former minister Yasser Abed Rabbo, who is the driving force of the so-called Geneva initiative on the Palestinian side.
The Geneva plan was drafted by Israeli left-wingers and Palestinian political and intellectual figures.
It deals with all key issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but its de facto renunciation to the right of return of some four million Palestinian refugees has earned it staunch opposition from many Palestinian factions.
On Saturday, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades -- a Fatah offshoot -- denounced the agreement.
Those who drew up the controversial plan are “Israeli collaborators and play to the tune of Zionism and the Americans,” the group said in a statement obtained by AFP.
On Sunday, in a statement claiming responsibility for a rocket attack on a Gaza Strip Israeli settlement, the armed wing of Hamas -- the Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades -- reiterated its rejection of the Geneva plan.
Several demonstrations organised by resistance factions to oppose the peace blueprint, which has also been rejected by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government, have taken place across the Palestinian territories over the past month.
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