The Palestinian movement Hamas will wait to see Israel's next move but will not be bound by the Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire declared at the Sharm el-Sheikh summit, Hamas' representative in Lebanon said.
The comments by Osama Hamdan came shortly after Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared at the summit an end to all military and armed operations. "The talk about what the leader of the Palestinian Authority called a cessation of acts of violence is not binding on the resistance because this is a unilateral stand and was not the result of the outcome of an intra-Palestinian dialogue as has been agreed previously," Hamdan told The Associated Press.
According to Hamdan, in order for a truce to succeed, Israel must release Palestinian prisoners and provide "a clear commitment ... to halt all kinds of aggression against the Palestinian people."
"These two conditions were not achieved at the summit," he said. "Overall, I think this summit did not achieve any valuable interest for the Palestinian people."
