Hamas to join PLO, Fatah in meeting on UAE normalization with Israel

Hamas will take part in a joint meeting of the Palestinian leadership on Wednesday to discuss the Israeli-Emirati normalization agreement, senior Hamas official Hasan Yousef tells the Anadolu News Agency.

“Hamas received an invitation from PLO Central Committee member Azzam al-Ahmad, as well as from the Fatah Central Committee. The invitation was accepted,” Yousef says.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said earlier today that the meeting would also discuss “a number of issues related to our causes.”

Yousef says the names of the officials in the Hamas delegation will be released later tonight.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad also says it has received an invitation to participate in the joint meeting, although it has not yet announced whether it will attend.

The last time the two Gaza-based terror groups were invited to attend a major joint conference of the Palestinian leadership was in May, when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced the end of security coordination with Israel due to Israel’s plans to annex parts of the West Bank. Neither group showed up.

Previous announcements of Hamas-Fatah reconciliation to cooperate against the planned annexation — the two factions have been divided since a bloody 2007 civil war — did not seem to bear fruit and a joint rally in Gaza at which Abbas was supposed to speak never materialized.

— Aaron Boxerman