Hamas, Fatah Declare End of Palestinian Rift as Israeli Strike in Gaza Wounds 6
Rival Palestinian leaders from the West Bank and Gaza Strip forged a new reconciliation agreement on Wednesday, angering Israel at a time when peace talks are at a standstill.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for choosing "Hamas, not peace", and a Netanyahu aide said he had called off a peace meeting with the Palestinians scheduled for Wednesday evening.
However, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told Agence France Presse that no meeting with the Israelis had been planned for Wednesday.
He said the Palestinians would meet bilaterally with U.S. peace envoy Martin Indyk in Ramallah on Thursday.
Under the rapprochement between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) -- internationally recognized as the sole representative of the Palestinian people -- and the Islamist Hamas which rules Gaza, the sides agreed to form a "national consensus" government in the coming weeks.
"An agreement has been reached on the formation within five weeks of an independent government headed by President Mahmoud Abbas," said a joint statement read out by Hamas's Gaza premier Ismail Haniya in front of a visiting PLO delegation.
The news brought thousands of people on to the streets of Gaza in celebration.
Amid the jubilation, an Israeli air strike wounded six people, Hamas officials said.
It was not the first time that the Palestinian rivals have announced a deal to end seven years of separate administrations in the West Bank and Gaza.
But the latest reconciliation attempt by the West Bank-based Palestinian leadership drew an angry reaction from Netanyahu.
"This evening... Abu Mazen chose Hamas, not peace," a statement from Netanyahu's office quoted him as saying, using the name by which Abbas is familiarly known.
"Whoever chooses Hamas does not want peace."
Abbas denied the charge, saying in a statement from his office: "There is no incompatibility between reconciliation and the talks, especially since we are committed to a just peace on the basis of a two-state solution in accordance with the resolutions of international law."
Shortly after the unity deal was announced an Israeli warplane attacked a target at Beit Lahiya north of Gaza City, wounding six people, one seriously, the Hamas interior ministry said.
An Israeli military statement described the strike as "a joint counter-terrorism operation" by the air force and the Shin Bet intelligence agency, and indicated that it missed its intended target.
"A hit was not identified," it said, without elaborating.
Later in the day, the Israeli military said Palestinians fired three rockets from the Gaza Strip at southern Israel, one of which fell in the compound adjacent to the Erez border crossing.
There were no reports of casualties.
The Palestinian agreement was reached during talks in Gaza City between Hamas leaders and a PLO team headed by Azzam al-Ahmad, a senior figure in Abbas' Fatah movement.
It was greeted with public celebration in Gaza City and in towns and refugee camps throughout the enclave, with crowds waving Palestinian flags and shouting "Palestinian unity!"
The rival sides have announced several times before that they would make way for a coalition of technocrats, but such pledges were never implemented and analysts expressed skepticism that this time would be any different.
"People have heard the same thing over and over again, and each time the agreement had been broken by either Fatah or Hamas," said Samir Awad, politics professor at Birzeit University in the West Bank.
The latest announcement came as U.S.-brokered peace talks teetered on the edge of collapse.
Erakat met his Israeli counterpart Tzipi Livni, and Indyk, on Tuesday in a bid to extend the peace talks, which are due to end on April 29.
"The meeting lasted several hours but we did not manage to overcome our differences," Erakat said.
"We will continue to meet the Israeli delegation up to April 29 but clearly the Israelis don't want to move the peace process forward."
Abbas has said he will extend the negotiations only if Israel frees a batch of Arab prisoners previously earmarked for release, freezes settlement building in the West Bank, including annexed east Jerusalem, and agrees to discuss the borders of a future Palestinian state.
Later on Wednesday, the United States warned that the reconciliation deal could seriously hamper its efforts to forge a peace deal with Israel.
Any Palestinian government must commit "unambiguously" to the principles of non-violence and to the existence of Israel, said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, restating a long-held U.S. position.
"Absent a clear commitment to those principles, this could seriously complicate our efforts to extend the negotiations," she told reporters.
"It's hard to see how Israel can be expected to negotiate with a government that does not believe in its right to exist."
Washington was both "disappointed" and "troubled" by Wednesday's announcement of a rapprochement between the PLO -- internationally recognized as the sole representative of the Palestinian people -- and Hamas, she added.
Source: Agence France Presse
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