Fatah and Hamas leaders to head to Cairo for cabinet talks

May 11, 2011

Gaza - Leaders of Hamas and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party will head to Egypt at the weekend to begin talks on forming a new cabinet, under the terms of the reconciliation deal they signed a week ago, a Hamas official said Wednesday.

Under the reconciliation deal, the Islamist Hamas and the secular Fatah will set up an interim government of technocrats.

Salah al-Badaweel said that once the new government is formed, it will also work to rebuild the Palestinian security organizations, in addition to laying the groundwork for elections to be held next year.

'An Arab committee that includes Egyptians and other Arab officials has been formed to follow up the implementation of the reconciliation pact reached in Cairo on May 4,' he said.

The Hamas-Fatah reconciliation pact ended a four-year-long bitter, and at times violent, rift between the two largest Palestinians factions.

Although tensions between the two movements were high once Hamas defeated Fatah in the 2006 elections, the animosity peaked in June 2007, when, in a week of bloody fighting, Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip after routing security officials loyal to Fatah and the Palestinian Authority.

The Islamist movement took control of Palestinian Authority ministries and institutions in the salient, and Abbas responded by pulling Fatah out of a short-lived national unity government.

Ever since, a Hamas government has administered the Gaza Strip and an Abbas-appointed government has run the West Bank.

Egyptian attempts to reconcile the two rivals were unsuccessful until two weeks ago, when Hamas and Fatah representatives reached agreement on the issues dividing them.

The reconciliation agreement was signed in Cairo on May 4.

The Hamas and Fatah leaders will now meet in Cairo on Saturday.

Source: Monsters and Critics.
Link: http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/middleeast/news/article_1638451.php/Fatah-and-Hamas-leaders-to-head-to-Cairo-for-cabinet-talks.