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Palestinian Factions Trade Blame as Hamas-Fatah Unity Talks Postponed
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas appoints Mohammad Mustafa as prime minister of the Palestinian Authority (PA), in Ramallah, in the West Bank March 14, 2024 in this handout image. Photo: Palestinian president office/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
Reconciliation talks between Hamas and Fatah due to be held in China this month have been delayed and no new date has been set, Palestinian officials said on Monday, underlining dim chances of Palestinian unity even as Israel presses its Gaza offensive.
After hosting a meeting of Palestinian factions in April, China said Fatah — which is led by President Mahmoud Abbas — and Hamas had expressed the will to seek reconciliation through unity talks in Beijing. Officials from Fatah and Hamas had previously said the follow-up meeting would be in mid-June.
But with the factions deeply split, analysts had held out little hope of the talks achieving a breakthrough towards a deal that could create a unified Palestinian administration for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, controlled by the terrorist Islamist organization Hamas since 2007.
Fatah and Hamas traded blame over the delay.
Senior Hamas official Basem Naim, who attended the previous meeting, told Reuters Fatah had requested an indefinite delay.
Fatah spokesperson Abdel Fattah Dawla said his movement had not rejected the invitation to meet but had held discussions with the Chinese ambassador about the proposed date in light of he what he described as escalating Israeli aggression and “the complexities of events.”
An alternative date had been proposed, but Hamas had responded by refusing to take part, Dawla said.
A Hamas official denied this account, saying the movement had not rejected another meeting.
The Chinese foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.
PRESERVING INFLUENCE
Israel has been waging war in Gaza since the Iran-backed Hamas launched its Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, seeking to destroy the group and free the hostages kidnapped by the Palestinian terrorist group.
Hamas has sought a deal with Fatah on a new technocratic administration for the West Bank and Gaza as part of a wider political deal, Reuters reported this month, underlining the group’s aim of preserving influence once the war ends.
The United States and EU, which shunned Hamas as a terrorist group long before the Oct. 7 attack, oppose any role for the group in governing Gaza after the war.
Western states support the idea of post-war Gaza being run by a revamped Palestinian Authority (PA), the administration led by Abbas that has limited self-rule over patches of the West Bank.
The PA also ran Gaza until 2007, when Hamas drove Fatah from the enclave, a year after defeating Fatah in parliamentary elections — the last time Palestinians voted.
Hamas has long rejected Abbas’ approach of seeking to negotiate the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital, deeming it a failure and advocating armed struggle.
Hamas’ 1988 founding charter called for Israel‘s destruction. In 2017, Hamas said it agreed to a transitional Palestinian state within frontiers pre-dating the 1967 war, though it still opposed recognizing Israel‘s right to exist.
The post Palestinian Factions Trade Blame as Hamas-Fatah Unity Talks Postponed first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels
View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.
i24 News – Sweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Scandinavian country said on Friday.
The decision comes on the heels of multiple revelations regarding the agency’s employees’ involvement in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Sweden’s decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channeling aid via the agency more difficult, the country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, said.
“Large parts of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza are either going to be severely weakened or completely impossible,” Dousa said. “For the government, the most important thing is that support gets through.”
The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: “We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden’s decision to drop its support for UNRWA.
“There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach,” she said.
The post Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Pope Calls Gaza Airstrikes ‘Cruelty’ After Israeli Minister’s Criticism
Pope Francis waves after delivering his traditional Christmas Day Urbi et Orbi speech to the city and the world from the main balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, December 25, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Yara Nardi
Pope Francis on Saturday again condemned Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, a day after an Israeli government minister publicly denounced the pontiff for suggesting the global community should study whether the military offensive there constitutes a genocide of the Palestinian people.
Francis opened his annual Christmas address to the Catholic cardinals who lead the Vatican’s various departments with what appeared to be a reference to Israeli airstrikes on Friday that killed at least 25 Palestinians in Gaza.
“Yesterday, children were bombed,” said the pope. “This is cruelty. This is not war. I wanted to say this because it touches the heart.”
The pope, as leader of the 1.4-billion-member Roman Catholic Church, is usually careful about taking sides in conflicts, but he has recently been more outspoken about Israel’s military campaign against Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
In book excerpts published last month, the pontiff said some international experts said that “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide.”
Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli sharply criticized those comments in an unusual open letter published by Italian newspaper Il Foglio on Friday. Chikli said the pope’s remarks amounted to a “trivialization” of the term genocide.
Francis also said on Saturday that the Catholic bishop of Jerusalem, known as a patriarch, had tried to enter the Gaza Strip on Friday to visit Catholics there, but was denied entry.
The patriarch’s office told Reuters it was not able to comment on the pope’s remarks about the patriarch being denied entry.
Israeli officials were not immediately reachable for comment on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, and the Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The post Pope Calls Gaza Airstrikes ‘Cruelty’ After Israeli Minister’s Criticism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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IDF Pledges to Implement Lessons from Failure to Intercept Houthi Missile
Iranian-backed Yemeni terrorist leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi. Photo: Screenshot
i24 News – The Israeli military said on Saturday that while the investigation into the failure to intercept the missile that hit Tel Aviv early in the morning was still ongoing, some lessons were already being implemented. The ballistic missile, fired by Yemen’s Houthi jihadists, landed at a playground in a residential area, leading to 16 people sustaining injuries from glass shards.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson said that “some of the conclusions have already been implemented, in regards of both interception and early warning.”
The spokesperson added that “no further details regarding aerial defense activities and the alert system can be disclosed due to operational security considerations.”
The Houthis have repeatedly fired drones and missiles towards Israel in what they describe as “acts of solidarity” with Palestinians in Gaza.
The post IDF Pledges to Implement Lessons from Failure to Intercept Houthi Missile first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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