Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal called on Saturday for a new intifada against Israel after air strikes in the Gaza Strip killed more than 200 Palestinians.

"I call upon you (Palestinians) to carry out a third intifada," Meshaal, who lives in exile in Damascus, told Al-Jazeera television in an interview.

He called for a "military intifada against the Zionist enemy", as well as "a peaceful intifada internally", an apparent reference to Hamas's power struggle with Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose government is based in the Israeli occupied West Bank.

Meshaal said Hamas had accepted "all the peaceful options, but without results."

He said that for there to be any talks with the people of Gaza, "the blockade must be lifted and the crossings [from Israel] opened ... notably that in Rafah," which leads to Egypt.

The Hamas leader, who live in exile in Syria, said he was open to reconciliation with Abbas, but demanded that the Palestinian president cease negotiations with Israel.

"Neither rockets nor suicide operations are absurd, but negotiations are," he said.

The first intifada, or uprising, broke out in 1988, and was followed by the 1993 Oslo peace accords, which led to a certain degree of Palestinian autonomy with the creation of the Palestinian Authority.

A second intifada broke out in 2000 and eventually ran out of steam three years later.


Agencies