Fatah

The announcement of an Egypt-brokered reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas on Thursday raised hopes that a decade of bitter feuding between the rival Palestinian factions may finally come to an end.
The early conclusion of the talks in Cairo hinted at how much pressure both sides were under to make progress.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas hailed what he called a “declaration of the end to division”. He is expected to visit Gaza within the next month, for the first time since Hamas ousted Fatah from the enclave in 2007.

Egypt’s enthusiasm to arbitrate between feuding Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, is not the outcome of a sudden awakening of conscience. Cairo has, in fact, played a destructive role in manipulating Palestinian division to its favor, while keeping the Rafah border crossing under lock and key.

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Hamas’s offer to submit to a long-delayed reconciliation process with its Fatah rivals signals that the balance of regional forces may be tipping in its favour and against Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, analysts say.
Officials from the Palestinian Authority (PA), led by Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, are due in Gaza on Monday, for the first time in three years, to test Hamas’s commitment to establishing a unity government.
The first weekly government meeting is scheduled to take place on Tuesday, with an Egyptian delegation overseeing the proceedings.

I’ve been writing about the plight of the amiable Palestinian people under Israel’s jackboot for the same length of time that Mahmoud Abbas has been Palestinian president. And that’s far too long. Abbas has also been chairman of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation, which describes itself as the sole representative of the Palestinian people) for even longer.
A recent poll by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research showed that the Palestinians have had enough. Two-thirds want Abbas out.

GAZA (Sputnik) – The Palestinian movement of Hamas’ promise to dissolve its administrative committee have been a positive sign for intra-Palestinian dialogue, Mahmoud Aloul, the deputy leader of the Fatah party, said Sunday.
“The news that Hamas is dissolving the so-called administrative committee in the Gaza Strip is positive and promising,” Aloul said, as broadcast by the Voice of Palestine radio.

Perhaps it was fitting that the most significant act of organized mass resistance by Palestinians to the occupation in many years was launched from behind bars. In April of this year more than 1,500 political prisoners began an indefinite hunger strike against their increasingly degrading treatment by the Israeli authorities. Some called it a prison “intifada,” the word Palestinians use for their serial efforts to “shake off” Israeli oppression.

Residents of Qatari-funded housing complex wave their national and Qatari flags during a demonstration in solidarity with Qatar in front of Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani’s mosque in the center of the housing complex in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, June 9, 2017. (AP/Adel Hana)
UNITED NATIONS — Over a thousand miles from the heart of a tense diplomatic impasse between Qatar and its regional rivals, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, a lesser known but closely related situation is developing in Palestine’s Gaza Strip.

Donald Trump has met with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas at the White House. Trump promised to act as a ‘facilitator’, ‘mediator’ or ‘arbitrator’ in future peace talks between Israel and Palestine.
However, no concrete plans were proposed beyond the long standing commitment of the US and the Palestinian leadership to work for a so-called two state solution whereby a Palestinian state would be formed on the basis of the 1967 borders of the region. Such a plan would see a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital.

The Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas is due to meet Donald Trump in the White House on Wednesday to discuss reviving the long-cold corpse of the peace process.
Back home, things are heating up. There is anger in the West Bank, both on the streets and within the ranks of Abbas’s Fatah movement. The trigger is a two-week-old hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners.
Last Thursday, Palestinians shuttered their businesses in a show of solidarity, and the next day youths clashed with the Israeli army in a “day of rage”.