Hamas: Abbas-Olmert meetings are useless

Gaza-based Palestinian government reiterated on Tuesday that the bilateral meetings between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will yield no meaningful results.

Abbas and Olmert are scheduled to resume their meetings on Tuesday.

Hamas spokesperson Fawzi Barhoum said, "These meetings support the line of thinking that president Abbas tries to get Israeli support to maintain superiority over Hamas and other resistance factions which refused to recognize Israel."

According to Barhoum, "Abbas' unilateral decisions on core Palestinian issues benefit the Israel-American attempts to maintain the state of disagreement between the Palestinians for the best of the Israeli entity."

He added that the Abbas-Olmert meetings usually follow criminal Israeli acts against the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip seeking to provide political cover for those Israeli violations.

Tuesday's meeting follows an escalating series of almost daily Israeli airstrikes and ground incursions in the Gaza Strip.