Al-Qaeda's No. 2 accused the Palestinian Hamas of selling out by agreeing to respect past peace deals with Israel, according to a recording broadcast on Sunday by al-Jazeera satellite channel.
Ayman al-Zawahri lashed out at the group for making its most concrete commitment to a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict when it agreed last month during a meeting in Saudi Arabia to "respect" earlier peace deals with Israel. An expert in the terror group's messages described the Egyptian militant's comments were his harshest to date about the Palestinian group.
"Hamas went on a picnic with the American devil and its Saudi Agent," al-Zawahri said.
He mocked Saudi King Abdullah, who proposed the Arab peace plan in 2002 when he was crown prince, calling it the "initiative that was dictated to him" by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.
Al-Zawahri's recording was broadcast just weeks ahead of a summit later this month in Saudi Arabia that is expected to relaunch a 2002 Saudi initiative for peace with Israel.
The militant, deputy to the terror network's leader Osama bin Laden, said Hamas should not back down at a time when he claimed the US was facing difficulties in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"O you sensible ones, why all this retreat in front of the American scheme? America is being defeated in Afghanistan and Iraq," al-Zawahri said.
Al-Zawahri criticized Iraq's security conference which was held on Saturday in Baghdad, the al-Jazeera anchorman said. He quoted the militant as describing the conference as "an attempt to find an exit for the Americans," but the channel did not play that part of the recording.
The Qatar-based TV channel broadcast the message just minutes before the Israeli prime minister and the Palestinian president finished a meeting -- their second in a month.
Hamas dismissed the message as "a bad statement" and said that al-Zawahri had no right to judge the group.
"I think he does not understand the situation here very well. We still believe in struggle, but we also think that the political track is a part of resistance," Hamas government spokesman in Gaza, Ghazi Hamad, said.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas obtained Hamas commitment on previous agreements with Israel from top leader Khaled Mashaal during talks in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, where they agreed to a power-sharing deal between their factions.
"Today, in the time of deals, the leadership of Hamas has given up most of Palestine to the Jews ... Hamas' leadership has finally caught [late Egyptian president Anwar] Sadat's train of humiliation and surrender."
Egypt, under Sadat's leadership in 1979, was the first Arab country to make peace with Israel. Jordan is the only other Arab country to have established full relations with the Jewish state.
Before Sunday's talks with Abbas, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he was ready to "treat seriously" the 2002 initiative calling for a comprehensive peace agreement in exchange for a full Israeli withdrawal from lands captured in the 1967 Mideast War.
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