Special report: Palestine-Israel Relations

    GAZA, May 25 (Xinhua) -- Although it gives an encouraging push to the stalled Middle East peace process that Israel and Syria revived this week indirect peace negotiations under Turkey's auspices, the Palestinians expressed deep concerns over this issue.

    Palestinian factions' leaders and analysts believe that focusing on Israel-Syria peace track would certainly have negative impact on both direct talks with the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and indirect talks with the Islamic Hamas movement through the Egyptian mediation.

    As for Israel, it is easier and faster to reach a permanent peace agreement with Syria than strike a peace deal with the Palestinians.

    The Israelis believe that Syria is one country that has one president who controls an army and all his security forces, but the Palestinians are divided, where Gaza is controlled by Hamas and not all the West Bank is controlled by President Mahmoud Abbas.

    Above all, the major issue with Syria to negotiate about is the Golan Heights, where Israel is willing to give the area back to Syria through a permanent peace agreement and diplomatic ties.

    But, for Israel, the peace talks with the Palestinians are more complicated, especially having issues such as Jerusalem, where Israel considers it as its eternal capital and the issue of the Palestinian refugees' right of return, where Israel completely rejects the return of refugees to Israel.

    Fawzi Barhoum, Hamas movement's spokesman in Gaza said: "The Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are barren from the beginning. We have warned against it and said that the Israeli occupation will not give anything for the Palestinian people because the occupation wants to gain everything."

    He added that "This is also because of the American factor which supports the occupation at the expense of the Palestinian rights and principles."

    Palestinian analysts explained that the reason behind Olmert's decision to push forward the talks on the Syrian track is that because he wants to save himself from the probe he is facing in Israel that might move him away and create a real political crisis in Israel.

    All the Palestinians, either those who are negotiating with Israel or those who oppose the direct talks with Israel believe that the results of the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations are zero.

    Fatah movement's spokesman in Gaza Hazem Abu Shanab said that the Israeli-Palestinian talks which began secretly in 1974 and still going on in 2008 from worse to worst.

    "The Palestinian National Authority experience with the occupation proved that the talks are intended to ensure the Israeli occupation's security at the expense of the Palestinians," said Abu Shanab.

    The Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, meanwhile, believes that the track on the Syrian-Israeli talks may not affect the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

    "We don't want to forecast the track of the Israeli-Syrian talks but we don't think these talks may affect on the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. In any case, there are no relations between the two negotiation tracks because in Syria the situation is different than in Palestine," said Barhoum.

    Hamas believe that "here in Palestine, we have the Israeli occupation, the American support and a team of Palestinians, going with the American interests, affecting the negotiations and making them different than the situation of Syria."

    "We rule out that the relation between Hamas and the resistant groups, in one hand, and Syrian, in the other hand, will be affected by the negotiations. It is because Syria is a state of sovereignty that knows who to maintain its interests and restore its land," said Barhoum.

    Barhoum said he doesn't think the ties will be affected between Syria and Hamas and the resistance that Syria hosts. "We don't have any fears... there were talks in the past during the era of late President Hafez al-Assad and the ties with Hamas remained fine," he said.

    However, Jihad Hamad, a Palestinian analyst from Gaza said "We can't say the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are serious due to the Israeli delaying and taking advantage of time to impose painful facts on the ground like boosting the settlement construction in Jerusalem, tightening the siege on the Palestinian people, annexing West Bank land and setting up small crossings they call checkpoints. These crossings divided the Palestinian cities to separated communities."

    As Israel has no intention to give the Palestinian people their right of self-determination, there is no thing indicating a future statehood according to the American vision.

    Hamad said "as for Syria, I think there might be an achievement securing an Israeli withdrawal from Golan Heights or giving Israel a 10-15 year term to prepare for its withdrawal, but this of course requires true intentions."

    "I think the chances of success of the Israeli-Syrian track are higher than of the Israeli-Palestinian one because Israel occupies the Palestinian territories but doesn't occupy Syria. Syria is also a state of sovereignty and a member of the Security Council."

    The solution might be as the one, which happened between Egypt and Israel about Sinai, creating a buffer zone in the Golan without any military Syrian presence, and there might be international forces as in southern Lebanon, he added.