GAZA CITY: Rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas will hold another meeting in Damascus on November 9 in a bid to strike a unity deal, officials from both movements said Tuesday.
Senior Hamas official Ismail Radwan told AFP he hoped the meeting would "achieve reconciliation and restore national unity on the basis of national principles and political participation."
Azzam al-Ahmad, the point man for the talks in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s secular Fatah, confirmed the meeting in remarks carried by the official Wafa news agency.
The two sides had originally planned to hold the meeting on October 20 but postponed it following a spat between Abbas and Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad which led Fatah to demand a change of venue.
Hamas’s exiled leadership is based in Damascus, and Syria has long backed the Islamist movement in its opposition to peace talks with Israel.
Egypt, which supports the peace process, had hosted several previous meetings, but those efforts collapsed a year ago when Hamas refused to sign a unity deal endorsed by Fatah and Cairo.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said next week’s meeting would focus on "outstanding issues such as security, with mutual determination to leave with an agreement that will allow us to sign the Egyptian document."
He added that a delegation from Hamas in Gaza would take part in the talks.
The two longtime rivals have been fiercely divided since Hamas seized power in Gaza in a bloody route of Abbas’s forces in June 2007, limiting his authority to the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Several previous attempts to reconcile the two groups have failed, with each side accusing the other of undermining trust by persecuting political rivals in the territories under its control.
In recent months Hamas has stepped up its criticism of Abbas’s security cooperation with Israel in the West Bank, with its armed wing accusing his forces of committing "national treason."
