Hamas and Fatah to resume unity drive next week

Talks on elections and unity government to begin in Cairo, Palestinian official says

By Elhanan Miller 23 January 2013, 4:03 pm

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Elhanan Miller is the former Arab affairs reporter for The Times of Israel

Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas will next week resume efforts to finalize details of a unity government, a Palestinian official told The Times of Israel on Wednesday.

Khalil Assaf, head of the Consortium of Independent Palestinians in the West Bank, a grassroots organization of businessmen and academics, said that officials from Hamas and Fatah will meet in Cairo on January 30 to discuss details of upcoming Palestinian elections and the formation of a government including members of both factions.

The two movements have been at loggerheads since Hamas violently took hold of the Gaza Strip in 2007, but an agreement reached in Cairo January 9 paved the road for a new round of talks later this month, Assaf said.

Hamas, which has been preventing the work of the Palestinian central elections committee in the Gaza Strip, will permit its activity from the beginning of February, he added. In parallel, both sides will discuss the agreed-upon “bank of names” for government ministers, which include members of both parties, as well as independents.

Moussa Abu-Marzouq, deputy head of Hamas’s political bureau, told Palestinian television on Tuesday that his movement had no objection to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas serving as prime minister in the new government.