Israeli PM warns Palestinians against reconciliation

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned the moderate Palestinian leadership not to seek reconciliation with the militant Hamas, saying it would come at the expense of peace with Israel.

"We hear in recent days that the Palestinian Authority is thinking of uniting with Hamas," Netanyahu told Jewish fundraisers in a speech distributed on Tuesday by the Israeli Government Press Office.

"It’s thinking of effecting peace, not with Israel, but with Hamas," he said. "Well, I say to them something very simple: you can’t have peace with Israel and Hamas. It’s one or the other, but not both."

Officials of West Bank-based Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement and its bitter rival Hamas, the Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip, said on Saturday the two sides had held "positive talks" on a long-elusive burying of the hatchet.

Abbas has accepted a Hamas invitation to travel to Gaza in a bid to heal the schism, form a government of national unity and start preparing for presidential, legislative and Palestinian National Council elections within six months. No date has so far been announced.

Hamas and Fatah have been at loggerheads since the early 1990s but tensions boiled over in 2007, when the enmity erupted into bloodshed that saw the Islamists kick their secular rivals out of Gaza.

Since then, Gaza has been effectively cut off from the West Bank and repeated attempts at reconciliation have led nowhere.

Netanyahu ,made similar comments last Thursday, a day after Abbas, offered to visit Gaza and form a new government with his bitter rivals from the Iran-backed group.

"How can you be for peace with Israel and peace with Hamas that calls for our destruction?" Netanyahu said. "Can you imagine a peace deal with al-Qaeda? Of course not," he said.