Fatah, Hamas take ‘positive’ steps toward reconciliation at talks in Algeria

Divided Palestinian factions met in Algiers on Thursday amid efforts to persuade them to sign a reconciliation deal to lay out timelines to hold elections within a year, officials said.

“The Palestinians have been divided for more than 15 years, which has hugely weakened our cause,” said Azzam al-Ahmed, the head of the Fatah delegation in the Algerian capital.

Ismael Haniyeh, chief of the Hamas terror group, said the Algerian-mediated talks which began Tuesday had been “positive and calm.”

The Fatah party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and its main rival Hamas have been at odds since elections in 2006, which were won by Hamas but never recognized by the international community.

Months later, Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in a deadly conflict that consolidated years of division, with Fatah administering Palestinian-run areas of the West Bank.

Parliamentary and presidential polls, the first since the division, had been set to take place last year, but were canceled — the latest in a series of planned votes that never materialized.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh speaks during a press conference after meeting with Lebanese President Michel Aoun, at the presidential palace, in Baabda, east of Beirut, Lebanon, June 28, 2021. (Dalati Nohra/Lebanese Official Government via AP)

Hossam Badran, a senior Hamas official, said that the sides had “agreed to hold elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council, the presidency and the Palestinian National Council within a year.”

But Fatah, whose head Mahmud Abbas is at meetings in Kazakhstan rather than at the talks in Algiers, sparked doubts on Wednesday night that a draft agreement would be signed.

It demanded that members of any resulting national unity government abide by international law, a point rejected by Hamas.

“The document proposed by Algeria was general and doesn’t go into details,” said Palestinian analyst Khalil Shaheen.