Palestinian unity talks called off after Hamas boycott

PALESTINE: Reconciliation talks between rival Palestinian factions were called off on Saturday after Hamas announced a boycott to protest the detention of hundreds of its members by president Mahmud Abbas’s security forces.

“They’ve been cancelled,” Egyptian foreign ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki told AFP. Another Egyptian official, who asked not to be named, said the talks had been delayed to an undetermined date at the request of Hamas.

Egypt has for months been mediating between Abbas’s secular Fatah faction and the Islamist Hamas movement to try to reconcile the groups, whose rivalry goes back years.

The cancellation of the talks will complicate the floundering peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum confirmed that the group would not be attending the talks on an Egyptian reconciliation plan which were scheduled for Monday in Cairo.

“Our decision was made because president Mahmud Abbas is continuing to weaken the Hamas movement and he has not released any Hamas detainees in the West Bank,” he said.

The rivalry between the two brutally came to the fore when Hamas seized power in the Gaza Strip in June 2007, confining Abbas’s rule to the Israeli-occupied West Bank and cleaving Palestinians into two hostile camps.

“Palestinians have missed a chance secured by Egypt to help them realize national reconciliation and close ranks,” Egypt’s official MENA news agency quoted an unnamed senior official as saying.

“Egypt is still looking forward to all Palestinian factions working on rendering successful the efforts exerted by Egypt to hold a comprehensive Palestinian national dialogue.”

Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina slammed Hamas’s decision.

“Hamas carries the responsibility for the failure of the Cairo dialogue and the responsibility for losing the opportunity to regain Palestinian unity and stop the division between Palestinians,” he told AFP.

The Egyptian plan proposed a transitional government which would set the date for presidential and legislative elections.

It also called for reform of the security services, an end to Hamas’s rule in Gaza, and the presence of Arab security experts to oversee the reforms.

A clause in the proposal also mandated the inclusion of Hamas in the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organisation.

Hamas had already expressed reservations about the plan, saying it would give Abbas an automatic extension of his term in office that the Islamists insist must end in January.

Although Hamas won parliamentary elections in 2006 the United States, the European Union and Israel blacklist it as a terror group and in the past have boycotted Palestinian governments that include the group.

Cairo, Sunday, AFP