Wed 23 September 2020:
Talks on developing a strategy to face the challenges facing Palestinian causes, Trump’s Middle East plan as well as normalisation by the United Arab UAE and Bahrain with Israel
Palestinian party Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority (PA) government in the occupied West Bank, will meet a Hamas delegation in the Turkish capital of Ankara on Tuesday as follow-up from a meeting earlier this month of the heads of Palestinian factions.
The two rivals will discuss ending the internal division from when the Hamas movement took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 after a pre-emptive coup by Fatah.
On its official Twitter account, Fatah announced its delegation – which includes the Secretary of the Fatah Central Committee Jibril Rajoub – arrived in Turkey “to hold meetings with a delegation from Hamas that includes its leader and his deputy about ending the division and implementing the recommendations of the general-secretaries’ meeting”.
On September 3, PA President Mahmoud Abbas held a meeting where the heads of Palestinian factions agreed to consolidate a peaceful transfer of power through free and fair elections according to proportional representation.
Earlier, Rajoub had announced the Palestinians were heading in the direction of general elections, adding that “their decision is in their hands, far from the influence and care of any regional party”.
The Palestinians have not held general elections since 2006, and the internal division began a year later due to the conflict that took place between Fatah and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Since then, all attempts by the two sides to reconcile have failed.
