BICOM

The two main Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas reached an agreement in Cairo late Tuesday to bridge divides between them and form a unity government within the next three months.

The Fatah dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank, and the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip have been fierce rivals since a bloody coup by Hamas in Gaza brought an end to a short lived unity government in June 2007. Although relations between the two have warmed over the past several months, efforts to broker reconciliation collapsed in February. Agreement on a unity government has been reached on several occasions over the past few years, but none have been implemented.

Following talks at the Egyptian security services headquarters in Cairo on Tuesday, it was announced that the two sides had agreed to work towards the formation of a new Palestinian government and a date will be set for both presidential and parliamentary elections. A new PA Prime Minister must also be found to replace Salam Fayyad, a popular figure with Western governments, who resigned in April following increasing disagreements with PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

Fatah’s Azzam al-Ahmed told Voice of Palestine radio, “We must take immediate steps to agree on the Palestinian National Council’s electoral law and set a date for elections. We have said these measures must be carried out within three months.” According to AFP, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zohri commented that both sides had decided to “finalize all reconciliation issues in three months, including that of the national unity government.”

Meanwhile, in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, clashes took place yesterday between Israeli security forces and rock-throwing Palestinian demonstrators who were marking Naqba Day (“Catastrophe Day”), a Palestinian commemoration of the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, which happened amidst a war during which many Palestinians fled their homes.