Fatah faced US pressure to undermine reconciliation

A senior member of Fatah’s Central Committee has revealed that the Palestinian Authority and Fatah itself faced pressure from the US to undermine the reconciliation deal with Hamas last month, Quds News reported on Monday.

Azzam Al-Ahmad told a conference in Amman that the first phase of implementing the reconciliation would end by 1 December. He noted that this phase included the “successful” handover of control at the border crossings. There were a few problems in the handover of the education ministry and the Palestinian Environment Authority, he added, but these were sorted out immediately. The Fatah official stressed the importance of Hamas being part of the Palestinian national movement regardless of its own principles.

Furthermore, said Al-Ahmad, the government in Amman had agreed for the Arab commission to Cairo to broker the reconciliation portfolio and announced its readiness to rehabilitate the PA security forces.

The Palestinian MP and senior Fatah leader also pointed out that the Oslo Accords were an agreement of principles and that this agreement was effectively killed by Israel in 2002. He noted that PA President Mahmoud Abbas proposed the dissolution of the authority, but some of the anti-Oslo Palestinian factions rejected this proposal, believing that the PA is now a fait accompli.

Read: The backdrop of Palestinian reconciliation