GAZA CITY: A political advisor to Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh on Wednesday proposed holding a meeting in Egypt between Hamas and Fatah on the formation of a national unity government.
The time has come for an expanded meeting in Cairo between the leaders of Hamas and Fatah … to discuss new attempts or to finalize what has been previously accepted, Ahmed Youssef said in a statement.
He called on Egypt to get us off the path of political division, which distances us from the larger strategic interests of the Palestinian people.
Hamas has stubbornly refused immense pressure from the West and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas for an eventual national unity government with the moderate Fatah party to accept a political program that amounts to recognition of Israel and past Israeli-Palestinian agreements.
Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabr Al-Thani held separate talks late Monday with Abbas and Haniya but was unable to break the deadlock in the unity talks and calm deadly tensions between the rival factions.
Egypt on Tuesday took a fresh swipe at Hamas after Haniyeh cast doubt on an Arab peace initiative of 2002, which offered Israel full normalization of relations in return for full withdrawal from Arab territories occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.
Haniyeh said the initiative was problematic, for it entails recognizing Israel, while we have already made it known that we refuse such recognition. In an interview Tuesday with Egypt s leading state-owned daily Al-Ahram, Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit said: There is an Arab initiative of land for peace, which the Palestinian prime minister rejects. So let him find a solution on his own. I say this with no equivocation.
