Fatah meets for talks on Israel
PALESTINE: Senior members of Fatah, the party of Palestinian
president Mahmud Abbas, met on Wednesday to discuss issues from peace
talks with Israel to reconciliation with Hamas. The representatives from
Fatah's Revolutionary Council gathered in the West Bank city of Ramallah
from early morning for a day of talks on domestic and international
political affairs.
Abbas was during the day expected to deliver "a very important
address on the developments in the political situation, the
reconciliation process and the internal situation of the movement,"
council member Hussein al-Sheikh told AFP. He said Fatah's efforts to
reconcile with Hamas would be discussed and would show the Islamist
group was to blame for the failure to reach a deal on a government of
national unity. The bitter divisions between Fatah and Hamas go back to
the start of limited Palestinian self-rule in the 1990s, when Fatah
strongmen cracked down on the Islamist militant group. Their divisions
boiled over in June 2007 when Hamas - which had won a parliamentary
election a year earlier - drove Abbas's loyalists from Gaza in a week of
bloody clashes, seizing control of the impoverished territory.
All attempts at reconciliation, most of them mediated by Egypt, have
failed, with Fatah and Hamas accusing each other of undermining trust by
persecuting political rivals in the territory under its control.
The last round took place in Damascus earlier this month, but ended
without agreement, and the two sides said they would meet again after
Eid al-Adha, which ended on Friday.
In a sign of the continuing divisions, the Revolutionary Council's
deputy secretary-general Sabri Saidam slammed Hamas's decision "to stop
members of the Revolutionary Council in Gaza from coming to take part in
the meeting."
In response, Taher al-Nunu, a spokesman for the Hamas government in
Gaza, said they would allow them to leave in return for the release of a
Hamas member arrested in Nablus.
Ramallah, Thursday, AFP |