BICOM

Following talks in Moscow, Hamas and Fatah announced yesterday that they have agreed a formula to establish a Palestinian unity government.

The two factions had been in discussions in Moscow since Sunday and announced last night that an agreement has been reached which will also include Islamic Jihad. All of the factions will join the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s (PLO) institutions and form a new Palestinian National Council.

The factions will aim to elect a new PLO Executive Committee and form a government during the next two months. Currently, the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) exclusively administers the Palestinian areas of the West Bank, while Hamas is in sole control of the Gaza Strip.

Al-Jazeera quotes Azzam al-Ahmad, a senior Fatah official, who said: “Today the conditions for (such an initiative) are better than ever.”

Haaretz says that an unnamed senior Fatah official indicated that international developments such as Donald Trump’s incoming administration and the recent United Nations’ (UN) Security Council resolution which criticised Israel, mean that “a unity government is of strategic importance for the Palestinians”.

Moussa Abu Marzouk, deputy chairman of Hamas’s political bureau, commented that a unity government is “the most effective tool to promote the contentious issues that formed during the years of division, and it is responsible to promote the solutions, including the holding of free and democratic elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip”.

The first Palestinian municipal elections for ten years were postponed last year after a Palestinian court ruled that a vote could only be held in the PA-controlled West Bank.

Ever since Hamas violently seized control of the Gaza Strip from the PA in 2007, relations between Hamas and Fatah have been bitter. There have been several attempts at reconciliation between the two factions since then, including agreements to form a unity government, but none have come to fruition until now.