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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Hamas rejects talks with Fatah |
| 2009-01-23 |
| A senior Hamas official has dismissed any reconciliation talks with the rival Fatah group. His remark yesterday followed claims by the fighters that they emerged victorious after the group survived a relentless three-week offensive by Israel on the Gaza Strip. Sami Khater, a member of the fighter group's Damascus-based branch, says Arab and international donations to reconstruct the war-devastated Gaza should go directly to Hamas and not to rival Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas whose faction rules the West Bank. Khater says Abbas and his Palestinian National Authority cannot be trusted. Khater says a Hamas delegation will travel to Cairo this weekend for talks with Egyptian mediators on ways to consolidate a Gaza ceasefire in place since last Sunday. A top aide of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Hamas yesterday of "obstructing" efforts to reconcile the warring Palestinian political factions, by raising "new conditions." Yasser Abed Rabbo said Abbas' secular Fatah movement was willing to form a national unity government with Hamas. But the radical Islamist movement was raising new conditions because it was not interested in reconciliation and was instead working to consolidate its hold over the Gaza Strip, he said. He accused Hamas of killing, arresting and torturing Fatah fighters in Gaza. "Hamas has turned its guns from the enemy [Israel] to Fatah after the withdrawal of the occupiers" from Gaza, he said, charging that Hamas had turned hospitals and mosques into detention and interrogation centres for Fatah members after Israel has destroyed all the security buildings in the strip during its 22-day offensive. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #2 If only we could get Hamas and Fatah together ... in a locked room with bladed weapons. |
| Posted by: DMFD 2009-01-23 20:34 |
| #1 Sami Khater, a member of the fighter group's Damascus-based branch, says Arab and international donations to reconstruct the war-devastated Gaza should go directly to Hamas Cha-ching! Did ya take a lotta incoming up in Damascus, Sami?Any suffering from the PTSD? |
| Posted by: tu3031 2009-01-23 09:02 |