Hamas: arrests sabotaging reconciliation moves

Palestinian Islamist movement accuses Abbas of putting Israeli conditions above any national interest.

Middle East Online

Izzat al-Rishq DAMASCUS - The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Tuesday accused its rivals in the Fatah party of president Mahmud Abbas of undermining reconciliation efforts with a wave of arrests in the West Bank. "The continuing campaign of arrests and torture against members of Hamas in the West Bank proves that the leaders of the Palestinian Authority and Fatah ignore reconciliation," said Izzat al-Rishq, a Hamas politburo member. Speaking at a news conference in Damascus, where Hamas has its leadership in exile, Rishq held Abbas "responsible for hindering reconciliation efforts," and accused Fatah and the Palestinian Authority of "putting Israeli conditions above any national interest." "The security services of Abbas and (Palestinian prime minister Salam) Fayyad hunt down the resistance at Israel's request," Rishq said, charging that they were "morally and politically bankrupt." US diplomatic cables leaked by whistleblower website WikiLeaks show that Israel said it had received a request from Fatah leaders to attack Hamas in 2007. "We will never accept in any way that the reconciliation meetings are used as a cover for the campaigns of arrests and repression," Rishq said. Hamas and Fatah held two rounds of fruitless reconciliation talks in Damascus in September and November. The two factions have been fiercely divided since Hamas seized power in Gaza in a bloody rout of Abbas's forces in 2007. Rishq claimed that arrests had expanded in recent months to include "hundreds of Hamas members, including women." He called on Abbas and his security services to "immediately release all political prisoners," including six Hamas members detained in Jericho for nearly two years. He said those detainees had been tortured by Fayyad's security services and had been on hunger strike for nearly a month. Hamas and Fatah have repeatedly accused each other of undermining trust by persecuting political rivals in the territory under its control.