National unity is the most effective weapon in the Palestinian arsenal with which to confront Israel’s decades-long occupation, Ali Baraka, Hamas’s representative in Lebanon has said.
In an exclusive interview with Anadolu Agency, Baraka said Hamas “is now at a stage of national liberation that makes it essential to achieve national unity with a view to resuming the Palestinian resistance -- the Intifada -- against the Zionist occupation”.
He went on to voice hope that inter-Palestinian reconciliation would lead to “greater national unity, a lifting of the siege on the Gaza Strip and the cancellation of recent measures taken against Gaza by [Palestinian] President Mahmoud Abbas”.
- Tentative steps
Recent days have seen Palestine’s two main political factions, Gaza-based Hamas and the West Bank-based Fatah, take tentative steps towards reconciliation following ten years of intense rivalry.
After Hamas dissolved a committee tasked with administering Gaza -- a move on which Abbas had conditioned reconciliation -- the Palestinian president and Fatah leader this week sent his government, for the first time, to the Gaza Strip.
In a landmark move Tuesday, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah held his first-ever Cabinet meeting in the blockaded enclave since the Palestinian unity government was drawn up in 2014.
Yet despite the signs of warming relations between the two rival factions, the Ramallah government has yet to reverse any of the sanctions it has recently imposed on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
In remarks made following his Tuesday cabinet meeting, Hamdallah said Fatah was still awaiting the outcome of Fatah-Hamas talks slated to be held next Tuesday in Cairo.
“Hamas members in the West Bank are being pursued by the [Fatah-run] Palestinian Authority and its security services,” he said.
Hamas, he went on, “has sought to alleviate the suffering of the people of Gaza by responding to Egyptian [mediation] efforts and meeting President Abbas’s demand to dissolve the administrative committee so as to allow the unity government to assume [political and administrative] responsibility for the Gaza Strip”.
- Egypt talks
On May 4, 2011, Hamas and Fatah signed a reconciliation deal following weeks of talks, also held under Egyptian auspices.
Hamas’s arsenal, he asserted, “is not up for discussion”.
He also said that, within the context of any new unity government, Hamas would demand a role in Palestinian decision-making, both political and military.
“It’s unacceptable that Hamas sacrifices its martyrs and leads the [armed] resistance, while political decisions are made by a single individual or faction,” he said, referring to Abbas and his influential Fatah movement.