GAZA CITY - Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad on Wednesday dismissed as disappointing the Arab League's decision to reactivate a Middle East peace plan with Israel at its 2005 summit in Algiers.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri slammed the summit as "indicative of the deterioration and weakness of the Arab League", charcterising as "the worst thing" the relaunching of an initiative to "reconcile with the enemy".
"Any political initiative, regardless of its contents, is an unreasonable response to Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people and threats to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque," he added, referring to Islam's third-holiest site.
Instead of political proposals, Arab countries should "take steps to support our people and put an end to the aggression they suffer," he added.
The Arab peace initiative -- a Jordanian proposal based on a Saudi plan endorsed by the 2002 Beirut summit -- makes peace conditional on an Israeli pullout from occupied Arab land.
Israel immediately rejected the offer. One official said the proposal was "unacceptable" because it contradicted all recent advances from Egypt and Jordan, which Monday resumed top-level diplomatic ties with the Jewish state.
Nafez Azzam, an Islamic Jihad leader, said it was "pointless to continue to talk about Arab peace initiatives while Israel takes them lightly and rejects them out of hand to continue their aggression against the Palestinian people.
"Our expectations have been disappointed by the results of the summit along with those of Arabs and Muslims," he added.
03/23/2005 15:39 GMT