Gaza City/Cairo - Rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas
reached 'a breakthrough' in Egyptian-mediated talks in Cairo Monday
night, a Fatah negotiator said.
Negotiators reached 'a clear breakthrough on the file of political
prisoners and other outstanding issues' in their sixth round of talks
aimed at forming a 'national unity' government, Fatah negotiator
Azzam al-Ahmed told a news conference in Cairo.
Egypt had imposed a July 7 deadline on delegates from Fatah, which
controls Palestinian-administered areas of the West Bank, and Hamas,
which controls the Gaza Strip, to either form a national unity
government or accept an Egyptian compromise that would see a joint
committee to oversee the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip and
organize elections for a new government.
'A comprehensive convention will be held in Cairo on July 5, where
all Palestinian factions will join together to sign a reconciliation
deal that will forever end the rift,' Al-Ahmed said in remarks
carried by the Palestinian Wafa news agency.
Al-Ahmed said the rival factions had agreed on the broad outlines
of a deal, Wafa reported.
'Tomorrow (Tuesday), we will work on the final forms. I hope that
all the unresolved outstanding issues related to the election system,
the joint security force and the joint factional committee will be
finalized soon,' he said.
'We will keep working on closing the file of mutual political
arrests in both Gaza and West Bank,' al-Ahmed said.
In the days before the speech, Hamas had made the release of its
members in West Bank jails a condition for negotiations on other
topics, and both sides on Monday accused the other of arresting more
members.
On Monday, Palestinian security apparatus spokesman Adnan Dumiri
announced that President Mahmoud Abbas had ordered the release of 100
Hamas members previously arrested in the West Bank.
In a separate development, the Palestinian Authority (PA) Monday
accused the Islamic Hamas movement and its armed wing, the al-Qassam
Brigades, of preparing to assassinate senior Palestinian officials in
the West Bank before the July 7 deadline to undermine the talks.
Plotters were arrested, PA Secretary-General Tayeb Abdel Rahim said.
According to a poll released Monday, less than one-third
of Palestinians expected the rival factions to strike an agreement in
this, their sixth, round of talks.
The Jerusalem Media and Communication Centre found that 52.1 per
cent of 1,199 Palestinian respondents expected that the talks would
fail, while 37 per cent expected talks to succeed.
The poll was carried out in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank
between June 20 and 24.
But al-Ahmed seemed optimistic on Monday.
'I believe that an agreement may be within reach by (July 7),' he
said. 'We are closer than ever to signing on time - unless new
obstacles emerge in the future.'
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