Hamas to choose its government ministers this week

Hamas leaders are to convene in Cairo on Thursday to nominate ministers for the national unity government headed by Mahmoud Abbas.

Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan told the Saudi daily A-Sharq on Monday that the Cairo meeting would prove that Hamas was not placing barriers before Palestinian unity.

“Everyone will know that Hamas is making painful sacrifices for the sake of Palestinian reconciliation,” he said.

Hamdan stressed that Abbas’s interim government would have no political program, serving only to prepare the ground for presidential and parliamentary elections later this year. He added that the political arrests of Hamas members in the West Bank by Abbas’s men remained a serious threat to unity efforts, even after the recent agreement on the formation of an interim government.

On Monday, Hamas accused the Palestinian Authority of arresting a senior member of the movement in the West Bank city of Qalqiliyah.

Meanwhile, Hamas official Salah Bardawil denied reports that the organization had relocated its headquarters from Damascus in light of the political instability in Syria.

“Political bureau officials have been busy traveling outside Syria, [falsely] giving the impression that the movement has no offices in Damascus,” Bardawil said on Saturday.