Deadly factional violence and the storming of Parliament by protesters on Wednesday threatened to overshadow a new round of cross-party Palestinian talks seeking to cap tensions between Fatah and Hamas.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who belongs to the once-dominant Fatah party, met Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, leader of the Hamas-led government, in Gaza City before the main dialogue was to begin at about 8.30pm local time.
Abbas has said another seven days of talks between faction representatives would begin on Wednesday in an effort to bridge massive differences that have sparked violence and raised the spectre of civil war.
After meeting Abbas, Haniya said the two leaders had agreed that members of a controversial Hamas militia, initially outlawed by the president, would be absorbed in the regular Fatah-controlled police force.
”We agreed with the president that members of the force should be appointed to the police … There will be training for them to be part of the police,” Haniya told a joint news conference with senior Fatah member Mohammed Dahlan.
Dahlan said that Abbas and Haniya had agreed the 4 000-strong militia would be withdrawn from the streets of Gaza after their deployment last month ignited an upsurge in deadly clashes.
”The president and prime minister agreed to the withdrawal of all members of this force from the streets and junctions in Gaza Strip. The prime minister will take measures along with the interior minister to ensure this,” he said.
The new round of talks come against a backdrop of political crisis between Abbas and Hamas after the president set a July referendum date on coexistence with Israel.
Hamas has furiously opposed the referendum on a blueprint drawn up by faction leaders jailed in Israel and which flies in the face of its avowed determination to destroy the Jewish state.
In a radio interview, Abbas said he hoped the new talks would yield an agreement on a statehood document, thereby averting the referendum.
”Our priority is to reach an agreement … It is my wish to reach an agreement within a week, before that or after that, and then there would not be a reason for holding the referendum,” he said.
Aside from political differences, the dialogue will also seek to address an unprecedented surge in fighting between Fatah and Hamas sympathisers.
In fresh fighting on Wednesday, a Hamas militant was killed and a commander of the Fatah-controlled preventive security service wounded in the southern Gaza Strip.
Both factions denied responsibility for the incident in Khan Yunis, where Hamas gunmen set fire to the commander’s home.
In the West Bank town of Ramallah, furious government employees who have not been paid for months stormed into Parliament, ripped up documents and brawled with MPs.
The leader of Hamas’s parliamentary faction accused Abbas of orchestrating the chaos and of contributing to the ”siege” on the Hamas government.
”We are astonished to see the president say that he wants the prime minister to act as his right-hand man and then he imposes a siege on us,” said Salah al-Bardawil.
Speaker of Parliament Aziz al-Dweik was forced to halt proceedings in the Hamas-dominated chamber after the several hundred protesters barged in.
The vast majority of civil servants have not been paid since February owing to Western aid cuts to the Palestinian Authority over Hamas’s refusal to recognise Israel and renounce violence.
But efforts to break the economic siege were given a boost when Foreign Minister Mahmud al-Zahar returned to Gaza with $20-million in cash, stuffed in four suitcases.
Hamas and Abbas’s office agreed for the funds to be transferred to the finance ministry and used to break the effects of the siege. — AFP
