The Palestinian Authority condemned the Hamas terrorist organization on Tuesday for what it described as “contacts with foreign parties,” in an apparent reference to recent direct negotiations with the United States.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas, in a statement cited by Ramallah’s Wafa news agency, accused Hamas of breaking legislation that criminalizes “communication with foreign agencies.”
The Iranian-backed terrorist organization divided the “Palestinian national position,” Abu Rudeineh charged, noting that the contacts “were exposed on the eve of the emergency Arab summit in Cairo,” where Arab leaders talked about ways to support the Palestinian cause.
The spokesperson said Hamas’s actions “weaken not only the firm Arab position embodied in the summit resolutions, particularly the Egyptian-Palestinian plan for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, but also the efforts aimed at confronting the attempts to displace Palestinians.”
Abu Rudeineh concluded his statement by calling for Samaria, Judea and Gaza to unite “under the rule of a single national authority, a single law, a single weapon and a single legitimate political representation.”
In a separate statement, Abbas’s ruling Fatah Party stressed the terror group “only represents itself and Iran, as one of its agents in the region.
“Those who accepted the description of ‘nice’ from the American envoy [Adam Boehler] after offering concessions do not represent our people,” Fatah charged. It added, “Statements made by the leader of the [Hamas] movement who fled Gaza and is staying in hotels in one of the regional capitals reveal the extent of Hamas’s involvement in these conspiracies and schemes that target our people and their just national cause.”
U.S. envoy for hostages, Adam Boehler, confirmed on Sunday in a series of interviews that direct talks with Hamas had taken place, despite long-standing AMerican policy against negotiating with terrorists.
“The reason that I met Hamas is because I want to work to help to get Americans and Israelis out,” he said during an interview with Israel’s Kan News, adding that he wanted to know the terrorist organization’s demands for ending the Gaza war. “Some of the things that they talked about were relatively reasonable things and workable things,” he said.
Boehler has claimed that his positions were being “misinterpreted,” apparently referring to a “nice guys” remark he made about Hamas during a separate interview with CNN. He defined Hamas as a terror group that has murdered thousands of innocent people in an X post.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday that the rare direct meeting with Hamas was an isolated event and has yet to yield results.
“That was a one-off situation in which our special envoy for hostages, whose job it is to get people released, had an opportunity to talk directly to someone who has control over these people and was given permission and encouraged to do so,” Rubio told reporters.
The meeting between Boehler and Hamas “hasn’t borne fruit,” Rubio said, stressing that “our primary vehicle for negotiations on this front will continue to be Mr. Witkoff and the work he’s doing through Qatar,”, referring to Trump’s special envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, who traveled to Doha, Qatar on Tuesday for ceasefire talks, joining an Israeli delegation that touched down in the Qatari capital on Monday.