Hamas political chief Khaled Mashaal makes an unprecedented call for uniting his Islamist movement with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The move would for the first time bring Hamas into the umbrella group recognized by Israel and the world as the representative of the Palestinians.
Hamas political leader Khaled Mashaal at a rally in Hamas’s honor in Cape Town, South Africa, October 21, 2015. (AFP/Rodger Bosch)
Mashaal calls for a “united authority for inside and outside of Palestine, under the umbrella of the Palestine Liberation Organization.”
“It is time we reconsider that organization,” Mashaal says during a televised speech from Qatar broadcast live at the Fourth Palestinian National Security Conference, held in Gaza City.
Wasel Abu Yousef, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, tells The Times of Israel that, “We want that all of the Palestinian factions, which includes Hamas, will be within the framework of the PLO.”
The PLO, which was founded in 1964, is dominated by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement. Fatah and Hamas have been at loggerheads since the Islamic group seized control of the Gaza Strip in a bloody 2007 coup. Various subsequent attempts at reconciliation have been unsuccessful.
— Dov Lieber
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