by Khaled Abu Toameh
November 18, 2011 at 5:00 am
November 18, 2011 at 5:00 am
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal are scheduled to meet in Cairo next week to discuss ways of ending the power struggle between their two parties and the formation of a Palestinian unity government.
The talks between the two men will focus on the establishment of a unity government that would be dominated by "independent" figures and whose task would be to prepare for new presidential and parliamentary elections.
The meeting between Abbas and Mashaal comes more than six months after the two sides announced that they had reached, with the help of the Egyptians, a "reconciliation" agreement that would put an end to the continued rift between Hamas and Fatah.
But ever since the agreement was announced on May 4 in Cairo, Hamas and Fatah have failed to implement it on the ground.
The main reason why the agreement was never implemented was Hamas's strong opposition to the appointment of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad as head of the proposed unity government.
Hamas says it will never accept Fayyad because of his responsibility for the security crackdown on Hamas supporters in the West Bank and his close ties with Israel and the US. Many Palestinians also do not accept Fayyad because he was never part of the "revolution": he did not spend even one day in Israeli prison. Read the rest on:
No comments:
Post a Comment