Cairo meeting ‘did not fulfil the hopes of the Palestinians’

The Palestinian factions and the independent politicians ended two days of talks yesterday without achieving any positive conclusions for the more than two million people who are living under Israel’s stifling 11-year siege in the Gaza Strip.

During their meeting, the factions did not agree to take any measures to ease the blockage on the coastal enclave, the final statement of the meeting showed.

According to the document, which MEMO received a copy of, the factions discussed a number of issues and stressed the importance of Palestinian unity. They also welcomed the mutual Hamas and Fatah reconciliation deal reached on 12 October.

In addition, they stressed that the PLO is the “legal and sole” representative of the Palestinians and it “must” be reformed to include all the Palestinian factions based on the 2005 factional agreement. No timeframe was set for this.

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Officials stressed that elections must be held before the end of 2018. Adding that the security committee agreed upon in the mutual Fatah and Hamas reconciliation deal should start its work as soon as possible.

After the end of the two-day meetings, Hamas leader Salah Al-Bardaweel, who took part in the talks, said in a leaked video that “the talks did not fulfil the hopes of the Palestinians.”

He said:

We did our best to fulfil the hopes of the Palestinians people, but the American pressure on certain sides was greater that our efforts.

He later apologised for the remarks and said: “They came immediately after ending the talks and before writing the final statement and he did not know that he was being recorded when he spoke about the talks.”