The Hamas Movement said that any attempt by Egypt to force a national reconciliation agreement on the Palestinian factions "would just be ink on paper and could not be carried out." Ismail al-Ashqar, Hamas's representative of the security committee at the inter-Palestinian dialogue, said that the dialogue is based on consensus and that if any party – even the mediator - imposes its agenda it would not be an agreement, but just ink on paper with no chance of carrying it out. Al-Ashkar refuted one more time the news circulated by some websites that some members of Hamas have been released by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Indeed, he dismissed such news as misinformation.
On the other hand, Nabil Amr, the Palestinian Ambassador in Cairo and Palestinian permanent delegate to the League of Arab States, said that President Mubarak's article "How to Achieve Israeli-Palestinian Peace" on The Wall Street Journal newspaper yesterday, was an eloquent summary of the stance of the Arab and the Islamic world. He also affirmed that article settled the normalization process with Israel. Commenting on the article, he said: "President Mubarak settled the normalization process with Israel, as he affirmed that normalization can be achieved after settling the Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian tracks without closing the door to any Arab initiatives that may be taken if Israel dares take practical, convincing and real steps toward a solution." He added that the most striking things in Mubarak's article are his precision, his clarity, the short space between the introductions and the conclusions, and the appropriate time he chose to publish this article. Ambassador Amr pointed out that the whole world listened to US President Barack Obama's general orientations and the lackluster response by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to these orientations. "Finally, we heard the Arabs' stance through Egypt's president, whose country – and in particular the most prominent pulpit in the region - was chosen by President Obama to present his ideas and orientations," he said. "For decades, President Mubarak has been very realistic as a politician, Egypt's leader and Arab moderate and he has been making practical calculations. Moreover, the fluency of his message has settled a controversy that Netanyahu's maneuvers almost imposed on us as an alternative to the truth: what comes first, peace with the Arabs or normalization?" he added.
He pointed out that the article made a tempting offer that Israel cannot reject if it really wants to move forward in the peace process with the Arabs. More specifically, he said Mubarak offered Israel an end to threats in favor of solid and comprehensive security and its being recognized as part of the region, something that Israel has never gotten since it was founded.
