Certain Fatah leaders ‘do not want to end Palestinian political split’

A Fatah MP in the Gaza Strip said on Sunday that certain leaders within the movement are insisting that there should be no end to the Palestinian political split and do not accept reconciliation with rival movement Hamas, Al-Resalah has reported. Yahya Shamiyeh said that the current leaders of Fatah are not willing to end the division, noting that achieving any reconciliation while they are in charge is “very difficult” due to their exploitation of the situation for personal reasons.

“Everyone knows who obstructs any progress in the reconciliation file,” he said. “There are certain people inside Fatah trying to maintain the internal division as long as they can.” The policies adopted by the current decision-makers, he pointed out, are leading the Palestinians to a “dangerous” situation.

Furthermore, a Fatah MP in the occupied West Bank, Jihad Tameela, has also criticised the policies of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which is controlled by his own movement, in its dealings with charities run by Hamas, reported 24news.ps.

“I understand the PA’s detention of arms dealers, drug dealers and people who cause security chaos,” explained Tameela, “but I do not understand arresting our brothers for distributing blankets and other winter kits to the families of the prisoners and martyrs.”

The MP noted that the PA security services had arrested “without any reason” people who work with charities that distribute aid to needy Palestinians, including families in Nablus, Ramallah and Hebron. “It is shameful to arrest people and confiscate kits which should have benefitted needy people. Serving our people should be far from partisan conflicts,” Tameela added.

Earlier this month, Hamas reported that a number of its members who run charities have been detained by the PA in the West Bank. The Fatah-run PA took over hundreds of Hamas charities in the occupied territory after the start of the internal division in 2007.