Thousands of supporters lined the streets, which were decked in green Hamas flags, as he drove through the coastal enclave, boisterous resistance songs blasting from loudspeakers and gun shots ringing out in welcome as his motorcade reached the city. Meshaal will spend barely 48 hours in the territory and attend a mass rally on Saturday that has been billed as both a commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the founding of Hamas and a "victory" celebration following the November fighting. Israel rejects Hamas's assertion that it won the eight-day conflagration, which left 170 Palestinians and six Israelis dead and was ended by an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire.
Meshaal said his arrival in Gaza was like a rebirth that followed on from his natural birth in the nearby West Bank in 1956 and a second that was his narrow escape in 1997 from an Israeli assassination squad wielding a poisoned needle. "I pray to God that my fourth birth will come the day we liberate Palestine," he said, clearly moved by his reception, with uniformed police breaking ranks to try and kiss his hand.
"Today is Gaza. Tomorrow will be Ramallah and after that Jerusalem then Haifa and Jaffa," he said. Ramallah is in the West Bank, while the latter cities, which have large Arab populations, are in modern-day Israel. He later visited the home of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who was assassinated by Israel in 2004, as well as that of Ahmed Al-Jaabari, the group's military commander, who was killed in a similar air strike last month.
Hamas denied seeking Israeli guarantees that Meshaal would not be targeted in Gaza and massive security was laid on, with gun-toting, black-masked guards from the Hamas military wing patrolling the streets in open-topped trucks and motorbikes. "This is the most beautiful day in my life," said 27-year-old policeman, Mohammed Abed. "I kissed him on the head." Meshaal, 56, had been widely understood not to have set foot in the Palestinian territories since he left his native West Bank with his family aged 11. However in his speech he indicated he had returned there for a visit as a teenager 37 years ago.
UNITY PLEDGE Hamas has ruled the tiny Gaza Strip and its 1.7 million population since 2007, when it won a brief civil war with its secular rivals Fatah, which still controls the occupied West Bank. Israel had pulled troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005.
The two main Palestinian factions have tried, often with little enthusiasm, to patch up their differences. Meshaal vowed to push for unity which is longed for by ordinary Palestinians. "This is a promise from the leadership of Hamas. We will press ahead with reconciliation to end divisions and to stand united against the Zionist occupation," he said on Friday.
The Palestinian movement's founding charter calls for the destruction of Israel but its leaders have at times indicated a willingness to negotiate a prolonged truce in return for a withdrawal to the lines established ahead of the 1967 war, when Israel seized East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas continues to say that it will not recognise the Jewish state officially, and it is viewed as a terrorist group by Israel, the United States and most Western governments.