Noted Islamic scholar Dr Yousef Al Qaradawi attending the opening session of the fifth International Al-Quds conference in Algiers yesterday. (REUTERS)

Algiers • Exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal yesterday called on this week’s Arab summit to recognise the Palestinian unity government, but vowed that his group’s armed struggle against Israel would continue.

“The Arab summit in Riyadh needs to decide to break the isolation of the Palestinians and recognise the Palestinian national unity government,” Meshaal said in Algiers. “We call for a united Arab position. Let’s leave it up to the United States to divide Arabs into ‘hardliners’ and ‘moderates,’ and let’s take back the initiative,” he added, speaking at an Al-Quds Foundation congress before some 400 Muslim and Christian backers of the Palestinian cause.

Meshaal’s appeal came ahead of an Arab summit opening in Riyadh tomorrow, which will aim to revive an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan that was first endorsed at an Arab summit in Beirut five years ago. The Saudi-inspired plan proposes full normalisation of relations with Israel if it fully withdraws from all the land it occupied in 1967, permits the creation of an independent Palestinian state and allows the return of Palestinian refugees. The Palestinian unity government, made up of ministers from both prime minister IsmailHaniya’s Islamist Hamas movement and President Mahmoud Abbas’ mainstream Fatah party, was unveiled earlier this month.

Meshaal however said Monday that “Hamas will not renounce its armed resistance. Things are evolving in the favour of Arabs and Muslims, who should take advantage of the (current) situation” in the Middle East. The situation is not good neither for the Israelis nor for the Americans. The former are facing a profound domestic crisis of confidence while the United States is suffering one failure after another.”

The Al Quds Foundation congress, which was opened by Algerian Religious Affairs Minister Bouabdallah Ghlamllah yesterday, was scheduled to continue till tomorrow.