BICOM

Senior Hamas leader Moussa Abu Marzouk has stated that Hamas will not recognise Israel as a state, and that any agreement would only be a hudna, a temporary truce, in an unusual interview with the American-Jewish weekly The Forward. Hamas’s political chief Khaled Meshaal, who has been attempting to negotiate a deal between Hamas and Fatah to establish a national unity government ahead of delayed Palestinian parliamentary and presidential elections, had implied that Hamas would be bound by the results of a referendum on the issue of an agreement with Israel. Abu Marzouk is a possible candidate to take over from Meshaal as the political leader of Hamas.

Meanwhile Fatah, the dominant secular-nationalist Palestinian faction which controls the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, is planning on returning to Gaza, five years after its leadership was expelled or killed in a Hamas-led coup. The Fatah Central Committee is expected to meet in Ramallah tomorrow to discuss appointing a new head of the party in Gaza. Two months ago, the Fatah Revolutionary Council agreed on the appointment of Amal Hamad, a Gaza resident, to the party’s leading Central Committee, the first sign that the party was planning on restarting political activity in Gaza.