GAZA, (PIC)-- Palestinian premier Ismail Haneyya said that the Arab decision endorsing resumption of negotiations between the PA in Ramallah and the Israeli occupation authority (IOA) was wrong.

Haneyya, who was initiating the first stage of the "Road to Jerusalem" project in Gaza on Wednesday, said that the decision encouraged Zionists to accelerate the settlement drive in the West Bank.

He pointed to the IOA announcement of building new settlement units while American vice president Joe Biden was in the region as a clear American cover to such settlement activity.

The premier asked the "Arab brothers" and the Ramallah officials to benefit from this incident and stop racing behind the mirage of futile negotiations with the IOA and opt instead to restoring Palestinian unity and to support the Palestinian people's steadfastness and resistance against occupation.

For his part, senior Hamas leader in Israeli jails Abbas Al-Sayyed said on Wednesday that the PA decision to resume peace talks with Israel while there is escalating settlement expansion on the ground is a big political farce and manipulation of the higher interests of the Palestinian people.

“What sense does it make to have indirect political negotiations while on the ground, there is direct, daily security coordination targeting all elements of steadfastness and fortitude which our people have?” Sayyed stressed in a letter leaked from Israeli jails.