Palestinian factions meet as violence rises in the region
CAIRO — Palestinian factions met Sunday in Egypt to discuss reconciliation efforts as violence in the occupied West Bank surged between Israel and Palestinian militants. In Lebanon, fighting raged Sunday in the nation’s largest Palestinian refugee camp near the southern port city of Sidon, killing at least five people and wounding seven, Palestinian officials said.
The main Palestinian groups, Hamas and Fatah, have been split since 2007 and repeated reconciliation attempts having failed, so expectations for the one-day meeting in Egypt were low.
Participants at the closed-door meeting gave no indication of what was discussed.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who initiated the session in the Egyptian city of el-Alamein on the Mediterranean Sea, said at its conclusion only that the meeting was a “first and significant step” in efforts to end the long-running division.
It came amid soaring violence in the West Bank, where Abbas and his Fatah group are based and exert limited self-rule. Israel has been staging near-nightly raids in Palestinian areas of the territory in what it says is an attempt to stamp out militancy, especially in areas where Abbas’ security forces have less of a foothold. Those raids have led to some of the worst fighting in nearly two decades in the West Bank. Palestinians also say the Israeli raids undermine their own security forces and weaken their leadership.
The meeting in Egypt was chaired by Abbas, presenting the aging and longtime Palestinian leader with a chance to portray an image of control and statesmanship to both Palestinians and the international
community at a time when he is deeply unpopular at home and his room for maneuver is constrained by the Israeli incursions.
The meeting was attended by other Palestinian leaders, including Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, the militant group that rules the Gaza Strip.
Fatah and Hamas have been rivals since Hamas violently routed forces loyal to Abbas in Gaza in 2007, taking over the impoverished coastal enclave. Israel and Egypt have imposed a blockade on the territory.
For Hamas, joining the meeting was an opportunity to show Gazans that it is making an effort to mend the rift.
Another key group playing a central role in the fighting with Israel, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, boycotted the gathering to protest the detentions by the Palestinian Authority of its members, said to the group’s leader, Ziyad al-Nakhala.
In the Gaza Strip, several thousand people briefly took to the streets Sunday to protest chronic power outages and difficult living conditions, providing a rare public show of discontent with the territory’s Hamas government. Hamas security forces quickly dispersed
the gatherings.
Marches took place in Gaza City, the southern town of Khan Younis and other locations, chanting “what a shame” and in one place burning Hamas flags, before police moved in and broke up the protests.
In Lebanon, Palestinian officials, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, said fighting broke out after an unknown gunman tried to kill Islamist militant Mahmoud Khalil, killing a companion of his instead.
Later, Islamist militants shot and killed a Palestinian military general from the Fatah group and three escorts as they walked in a parking lot, another Palestinian official told AP.
Ein el-Hilweh is notorious for its lawlessness and violence is not uncommon. The U.N. says about 55,000 people live in the camp, which was established in 1948 to house Palestinians displaced by Israeli forces during Israel’s founding.
On Sunday, factions fired assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers and lobbed hand grenades in the camp as ambulances zoomed through narrow streets to take the wounded to the hospital.