Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Fatah and Hamas sign reconciliation deal

A total of eleven Palestinian factions signed a reconciliation agreement signed last week between the nationalist movement Fatah and Islamist Hamas, which is the accession of all groups in this document. The leaders of each of these eleven features separately initialed the document for Palestinian national reconciliation and agreement, which Egypt has acted as mediator, a day before to be held in Cairo a ceremony to officially announce the deal.

Information has gone beyond just signing the agreement by the factions, but a Palestinian source in Cairo said the event took place in a "positive atmosphere" and that "there was no such difficulty." For its part, a leftist Palestinian group responsible People's Party, Walid al-Awad, confirmed that "today all Palestinian factions, including Fatah and Hamas have signed the reconciliation agreement drafted by Egypt." Al Awad also noted that the celebration tomorrow, May 4, will be when the convention is "officially announced." Since last Sunday representatives of the different Palestinian groups have been coming to Cairo to join this agreement and participate tomorrow in the signing ceremony.

The event is expected to attend the High Representative of the European Union, Catherine Ashton, and the secretaries general of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, the Arab League, Amro Musa, and the Organization of Islamic Conference, Ekmeledin Oglo Hasan and Foreign ministers of several countries. In this ceremony, "no new signatures to the" according to an official source, who added that the act of faction leaders deliver speeches.

However, there are reports that suggest that tomorrow the leader of the Hamas political bureau, Khaled Meshal, and the president of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), Mahmoud Abbas, signed the document of reconciliation. The agreement, reached last April 27 by the Fatah and Hamas, ends four years of division and establishes the formation of a provisional government composed of technocrats and the holding of elections within a year.

The preparation of this document back to the beginning of negotiations for reconciliation, which were interrupted in 2009 when Fatah signed the agreement prepared by Egypt and Hamas rejected it saying that arrangements had been made at the last minute without your consent. The leaders of eleven Palestinian factions from both Gaza and the West Bank and including leftist parties, Islamic Jihad as well as independent figures came on the eve of the Egyptian capital.

Cairo is also Meshal, who traveled to the Egyptian capital on Sunday, and Abbas arrived this afternoon. Is expected in the coming hours, a meeting between Abbas, a Hamas delegation headed by Meshal and representatives of other factions to finalize details of the pact before the ceremony.

Besides putting an end to the division, the two hitherto rival groups reached an oral agreement on the need to continue with the cease-fire with Israel, Palestinian sources said the Egyptian daily Al Ahram. After reaching the 27th April the reconciliation agreement, discussed the issue of maintaining the ceasefire and agreed on the importance of any government to be formed will now be committed to it.

In exchange for maintaining the ceasefire, Palestinian groups call on Israel to commit itself to a ceasefire and facilitate the passage of people and goods through border crossings. But in Israel this reconciliation has raised many suspicions, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today urged Abbas not to endorse the agreement.

The dispute between Fatah and Hamas, which intensified in June 2007 after the latter forcibly took control of Gaza, marked the political and administrative division of the Palestinian Gaza and West Bank.

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