Hamas and Fatah delegate reconciliation talks


February 5, 2016
Sarah Benton


Hamas police officers at the Rafah crossing. Who guards the crossings is a major subject of disagreement between Hamas and Fatah. Can a national, unified police force be created?

Hamas: Reconciliation talks between delegations, not leadership

By Ma’an news
February 04, 2016

GAZA CITY — Hamas said Wednesday that no meetings have been scheduled between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khalid Mashaal as part of the latest reconciliation initiative.

Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri said the talks between rival Palestinian movements Fatah and Hamas would only see involve representative delegations from the two movements.

Ahmad Bahr, a member of Hamas and deputy speaker for the Palestinian parliament, the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), said during a press conference in Gaza City on Tuesday that the latest initiative hoped to establish a national unity government composed of all Palestinian factions
He said that as soon as this government was formed, it was hoped the PLC would convene, in what would be its first session since 2007.

Bahr said the initiative would also agree on dates for legislative, presidential, and national council elections across the occupied Palestinian territory, and would work toward new elections for the Palestinian National Council (PNC), the PLO’s legislative body.

He called on Fatah and Hamas to meet their “historical, national, and humanitarian responsibilities” to reunite the Palestinians, and applauded the upcoming meeting between the two movements in Doha this week.

The meeting, currently scheduled for Feb. 6, was announced by Hamas official Ismail Radwan on Saturday and is the latest in a series of attempts to reconcile the two movements since they violently fell out with one another in 2007.

The Palestinian leadership has repeatedly failed to follow through on promises of reconciliation and holding of long-overdue elections. Both movements have frequently blamed each other over these failures.



Can reconciliation be brought about by these two old geezers who have existed in a state of enmity for the last ten years?

Hamas, Fatah Officials to Meet in Qatar in Another Bid at Palestinian Reconciliation

‘Fatah’s strategy with Israel has failed and Hamas has also not been providing answers,’ senior Fatah official says ahead of meeting with Khaled Meshal.

By Jack Khoury, Haaretz
February 02, 2016

Khaled Meshal and Mahmoud Abbas, 2011.AP

A delegation from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party will leave on Saturday evening for Doha, the capital of the Persian Gulf state of Qatar, for a meeting with Khaled Meshal, the head of the political bureau of the rival Palestinian Hamas movement. The meeting is yet another effort to reconcile the rival Palestinian movements.

Fatah and the Palestinian Authority government were ousted from the Gaza Strip by Hamas in 2007 following parliamentary elections the year before that Fatah lost, creating the current split. The two sides understand that they must agree on a formula that will ultimately result in reconciliation, a senior Fatah official told Haaretz, because “Fatah’s strategy with Israel has failed and Hamas has also not been providing answers regarding its own strategy to the Palestinians in Gaza.”

Since 2007, there have been repeated attempts at reconciliation, including the signing of formal agreements between the two sides in Mecca, Cairo and Doha, but they were never implemented.

The centrepiece of the new initiative is a proposed Palestinian national unity government rather than a government of technocrats, the Fatah figure said, laying the groundwork for presidential and parliamentary elections within six months after that.

The tense security situation and internal pressures have led the two sides to undertake the new talks, but there is a sense in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip that the renewed talks are not likely to proceed quickly. That’s because the two sides have been digging in their heels on their positions regarding control of the two territories. The nub of the controversy relates to control over border crossings in the Gaza Strip and employment arrangements for police forces in Gaza and the 40,000 Hamas government bureaucrats there.

Senior Hamas official Ahmed Bahar announced on Tuesday at a Gaza news conference marking 10 years since Israel imposed its siege on the Strip that the new initiative will also include a gathering of representatives of Hamas, the Palestine Liberation Organization, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian factions to advance “a national Palestinian strategy that will assist the side to promote reconciliation.”

The new effort comes about three months after the most recent contacts between the two sides. An official meeting of delegations from Hamas and Fatah was held in Beirut in October. Abbas and Meshal have not met, however, since the summer of 2014, although they spoke by phone in September of last year.  In April of 2014, Fatah and Hamas agreed to form a government of technocrats that didn’t manage to advance the issues in dispute between the two sides.

 

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