New York — A senior Hamas leader, Nizar Rayyan, has stated that Hamas will soon control the Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA) by taking over the PA-controlled parts of Judea and Samaria, saying at a rally in Gaza, “In the autumn Hamas supporters will be praying in the Muqata compound in Ramallah [site of Abbas’ presidential office]. We are now praying at the Presidential compound in Gaza, just as we said we would. Abbas’ regime will fall like a leaf come autumn … in the fall the man who kills his own people will be exposed, and we will annihilate him just as we have annihilated others like him” ( Yediot Ahronot, October 30, 2007).

Hamas already controls Gaza, which it seized from Fatah in a bloody coup in June, forcibly taking over PA offices. Since winning Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006, Hamas has continued to adhere to the terms of it Charter, which calls for the destruction of Israel (Article 15) and the murder of Jews (Article 7).

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “It is a mistake that Israel and the U.S. are proceeding with preparations for a peace conference with Mahmoud Abbas’ PA despite the fact that part of the PA, Gaza, has already been seized by Hamas. Now we discover that Hamas is saying openly that it is planning to take over the PA-controlled parts of Judea and Samaria in the next few months. Quite apart from the folly of treating Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah terrorist organization as moderates and peace-makers, where is the logic of Israel offering major concessions to a PA that in a matter of weeks or months could be entirely in the hands of the genocidal Hamas organization?

“In the past, both Israel and the U.S. armed Abbas’ PA. Not only have such weapons been shown to have been used to murder Israelis in subsequent terror attacks but weapons given to Abbas’ PA also fell into Hamas’ hands when it seized Gaza. Yet today we witness both the Bush Administration and the Olmert government rushing headlong towards creating a Palestinian state which, bad enough as it would be under Abbas and Fatah, would be even worse under Hamas.

“It is clear that neither the Olmert government nor the Bush Administration have learned from the Oslo process and from President Clinton’s efforts to broker peace in 2000 that the Palestinians and their leadership are not interested in accepting the permanence of Israel as a Jewish state and support terror against Israel. As a result, efforts to proceed towards a peace agreement as though these facts did not exist will simply result in failure and more bloodshed, just as it did in 2000. Both governments should heed these developments and note the possibility of a Hamas take-over of the PA, which will make this state of affairs only clearer.”