Fatah and Hamas agreed on the goal of uniting in a single Palestinian government, but failed to resolve the crucial question of how the rival factions should share power.
After five days of talks using Yemeni officials as intermediaries, the West Bank-based Fatah government met face-to-face on Sunday with representatives of Hamas, which seized control of the Gaza Strip in June.
The two sides signed a declaration that both accept a Yemeni initiative calling for the creation of a national unity government and the rebuilding of security forces loyal to that government instead of factions.
Fatah insists that Hamas must give up power in Gaza as part of any reconciliation deal. Hamas counters that Fatah must restore Hamas to a position of power in the West Bank as well as Gaza.
The accord, signed in Sanaa, appeared to lean toward the Fatah version by calling simply for a national unity government in Gaza and the West Bank.
Fatah said the plan should be implemented, but Hamas said it was just the basis for more dialogue.
"Resuming dialogue in the future will be only to implement the Yemeni initiative in all its articles," Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a presidential aide, quoted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as saying.
Hamas retorted almost immediately that the initiative by Yemeni President Abdullah Saleh was all about dialogue and could not be implemented immediately.
"Not a single article of the Yemeni initiative can be implemented without coming to an understanding -- there should be a dialogue since practically speaking [the immediate implementation] you demand cannot take place," Hamas delegation head Moussa Abu Marzouk said at a press conference in Sanaa.
Disgruntled by years of inefficient and corrupt rule by Fatah, Palestinians handed a sweeping election victory to Hamas in early 2006. Hamas formed a government for the West Bank and Gaza, but the world boycotted it, labeling Hamas a terrorist organization.
Facing bankruptcy, Hamas was forced to bring Fatah back into a national unity government, but even that did not satisfy the world. After the Gaza takeover, Abbas dismissed the unity government and its Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh from Gaza, and installed his own government in the West Bank.
The West has embraced Abbas' new team while maintaining a boycott of Hamas in Gaza. The mediation efforts are meant to rescue Gaza from a severe economic crisis by getting Hamas to renounce its control of Gaza, hand back the control of the Mediterranean strip to the Palestinian Authority and restore a power sharing national unity government, ending the Western sanctions.
But Hamas is not willing to give up the power it wields. Hamas spokesman Taher Nunu called on Sunday on Abbas to fire Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and his ministers, to pave the way for a "constructive and sincere dialogue."
Saleh said the Palestinian talks would resume next month.
"This is the first round of talks and we will help Fatah and Hamas to reach agreement in the interest of the Palestinian people," he said.
He did not set a specific date, but Palestinian officials close to the talks said the meeting would likely come as early as April 5.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS