TEL AVIV — Hamas is treating the issue of reconciliation with the Fatah movement and the Palestinian Authority as a strategic one, according to the organization’s Gaza chief, Yahya Sinwar, who added during a meeting with unions in Gaza that divisions will not be allowed to continue.
“We won’t be just another side of the division,” said Sinwar, “and we don’t want to turn into an alternative for the PLO.”
According to Sinwar, Hamas’ politburo chief in Gaza, “We want the PLO to rightfully become the legitimate representative of all the Palestinians and to be the umbrella above all of us.”
Sinwar said that his organization rejects and opposes the terms Israel has set for Palestinian reconciliation.
“We won’t recognize Israel and we won’t give up our weapons and we will continue to be committed to the mindset of liberation and the return of the Palestinian people,” he said.
In his comments regarding the weapons of his terrorist group, Sinwar repeated and stressed, “The weapons of the resistance collected by Hamas don’t only belong to Hamas. They are the property of every one of Gaza’s residents. We won’t give up our weapons and they will be under a national umbrella that includes all of the Palestinians, and that is the umbrella of the PLO.”
Sinwar called on the Palestinian organizations, NGOs and public organizations in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank “to exert all pressure possible to bring an end to Palestinian division.”
Meanwhile, Breitbart Jerusalem has been informed by an Arab diplomatic source that the Egyptians are currently blaming Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for the delay in the reconciliation. According to the source, Abbas is currently insisting that Hamas give up all of its underground infrastructure to the Palestinian Authority, including weapons caches and tunnels.
The source noted that a delegation of Fatah officials led by former justice minister Freih Abu Median and other public officials met recently with Egyptian representatives in Israel and Ramallah, where Abbas rejected any option of moving forward with reconciliation without a clear plan to disarm Hamas and place its weapons under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority.
“Abbas was very inflexible in the meeting,” said the source, “He said that just as he is a king in the West Bank, he expects to be a king in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian president said he doesn’t want any rivals for power in the Gaza Strip and doesn’t want any militias active parallel to the security forces of the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip.”
The source added that Abbas is currently determined to completely subjugate Hamas through the reconciliation process and isn’t prepared to compromise: “The president (Abbas) is making it difficult with the Egyptians, who clearly warned that they won’t have any mercy on he who causes reconciliation to fail and, at the moment, Abbas is the main one causing it to fail.”
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