Mashaal calls for talks with Fatah to smooth over rift

Aiming to quell tensions with Fatah, the Qatar-based leader of Hamas Khaled Mashaal said Sunday that the two factions must resolve their differences around a negotiating table, rather than airing the grievances through the media.

In a video message broadcast at a Hamas rally in Sidon, Mashaal said it did not make sense for the PA to continue its security arrangements with Israel, or to disarm “the resistance,” Israel Radio reported.

Earlier on Sunday, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri also condemned the PA President Mahmoud Abbas and the PA leadership for remarks against the Gaza leadership, namely for calling Hamas a “shadow government,” and stating that the PA would not allow Hamas to make policy decisions like signing agreements or initiating conflicts. On Saturday, Abbas also mocked Hamas for launching thousands of rockets at Israel in the 50-day conflict, which did relatively little damage in Israel, Ynet reported.

“President Abbas’s remarks against Hamas and the resistance are unjustified and the sources of information and figures he relied on were incorrect and have nothing to do with the truth,” Abu Zuhri told the Palestinian Ma’an news agency.

Abbas has threatened to break off a unity agreement with Hamas if the Islamist movement does not allow the government to operate properly in the Gaza Strip.

Abbas’s remarks came on the eve of talks in Cairo with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, and a key address to the Arab League nearly two weeks after a ceasefire ended a major 50-day confrontation with Israel in Gaza.

“We will not accept the situation with Hamas continuing as it is at the moment,” Abbas said on arrival in the Egyptian capital late Saturday, in remarks published by official Palestinian news agency WAFA.

“We won’t accept a partnership with them if the situation continues like this in Gaza, where there is a shadow government… running the territory,” he said.

“The national consensus government cannot do anything on the ground,” he charged.

Heightened tensions between Fatah and Hamas were recorded in past weeks, after the Shin Bet revealed a foiled coup to topple his West Bank government on August 18. Abbas ordered a probe into the coup plot shortly after the revelation, and said it represents “a grave threat to the unity of the Palestinian people and its future,” reported WAFA.

Under the terms of the unity agreement, the Palestinians agreed to form an interim consensus government of technocrats, ending seven years of rival administrations in the West Bank and Gaza.

The unity deal sought to end years of bitter and sometimes bloody rivalry between the Islamist Hamas movement and its Fatah rivals, who dominate the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority.

The new cabinet, which is based in Ramallah, took office on June 2, with Gaza’s Hamas government officially stepping down the same day.

Despite the handover, Hamas has remained the de facto power in Gaza, with moves to implement the provisions of the unity agreement put on hold in the face of the offensive launched on July 8.

AFP contributed to this report.