29 April 2002

In the name of Allah the most Gracious the most Merciful

 Press Release

 We refuse arrest of Mujahideen

And we refuse American and British guards

On the Palestinian Authority’s approval of Bush’s proposal to put the Palestinian strugglers charged with slaying a Zionist official in a jail guarded by American and British soldiers, a responsible source in the Hamas Movement stated the following:

After its disgraceful step of trying the strugglers who assassinated the Zionist criminal minister of tourism, the PA last night agreed to the American president’s proposal to put those strugglers in jail with a unit of USA and British soldiers guarding them to allow for lifting the Zionist siege off Yasser Arafat.

We in the Hamas Movement reject and denounce this step because it represents a complete submission to Zionist and American conditions and demands. This step could further direct a blow to Palestinian national unity that was endorsed on the basis of resistance in face of Zionist aggression. It also poses as a new practical and humiliating acknowledgement that sovereignty over Palestinian lands was for occupation and the USA and not for our Palestinian people.

The attempt to focus all concern and efforts on the question of lifting the siege off Yasser Arafat is a scandalous attempt to minimize our Palestinian problem and a rejected neglect of the greater tightening siege imposed on our Palestinian people as a whole and not only Arafat.

At a time when American and British soldiers are expected in Palestine to guard the Palestinian detainees and to lift the siege off the PA chief, the Zionist tanks are storming the remaining areas of Khalil city and its villages. The invading forces are wreaking havoc in those areas in a fresh attempt to terrorize and subdue our people via massacres and prosecution of Mujahideen and resistance fighters.

The Islamic Resistance Movement
Hamas – Palestine
Monday 16^th Safar 1423H
29^th April 2002AD