RAMALLAH: Leading Palestinian political factions are to gather on Tuesday in Cairo to push ahead with reconciliation efforts, despite fundamental disputes ahead of a key Dec. 1 deadline.
The talks come as Palestinians face rising tensions with the US over the threatened closure of their office in Washington, but this is seen as unlikely to affect the outcome.
Tensions between the two largest Palestinian groups — Fatah and Hamas — have reemerged since they signed a reconciliation deal last month, but delegates hope the meeting of 13 factions could push the bid ahead.
The fate of Hamas’s vast armed wing, however, remains unclear.
Fatah, led by Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas, has been at loggerheads with Hamas since the militants seized control of Gaza in 2007.
But on Oct. 12, the two parties signed an Egyptian-brokered deal which is meant to see Hamas hand back civilian power to Abbas’s internationally recognized Palestinian Authority (PA) government, which is based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, by Dec. 1.
In a crucial first step, Hamas stuck to a Nov. 1 deadline to hand over the border crossings between Gaza and its neighbors Egypt and Israel.
However, since that date, progress has appeared to stall, with Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah suggesting the PA needed full security control of Gaza before further steps could be taken.
Hamas rejected that, accusing Hamdallah of seeking to change the terms of the agreement.
The Fatah-dominated Palestinian government has also refused to remove crippling measures targeting Gaza — including reducing electricity.
Palestinians and international powers hope an implemented reconciliation deal could help ease the suffering of Gaza’s two million residents, who suffer from high rates of poverty and unemployment. Multiple previous reconciliation attempts have failed.
The Cairo talks come amid a rise in US-Palestinian tensions over a threatened closure of the office in Washington of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which the international community recognizes as representing all Palestinians.
The threatened closure was apparently over a Palestinian suggestion of taking the issue of Israeli settlements on occupied land to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
But an analyst said these tensions were not likely to influence discussions in Cairo.
“I don’t think the tensions between the PA and Washington will affect the reconciliation process,” Palestinian political analyst George Giacaman said.
“The problems that the PA is facing regarding Gaza are of a different nature: How will they cope with the financial and humanitarian situation in Gaza, how will they control the groups that Hamas struggled to control until now?”
Tuesday’s meeting brings together 13 factions, and analysts expect them all to back reconciliation.
Wasel Abu Yousef, a senior PLO official, said the talks could last until Thursday, with all factions expected to be in attendance.
PA ordered to pay for deadly attack
An Israeli judge has ordered the PA and perpetrators of a deadly 2001 attack to pay $18 million in damages to relatives of those killed, the court said Sunday.
The Jerusalem District Court named imprisoned Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti as one of the seven liable to compensate relatives for their role in the shooting that killed three family members.
The ruling, handed down on Thursday by justice Moshe Drori, awarded the relatives 62 millions shekels ($18 million), which is to be divided between the PA, which would pay 40 percent, and the seven Palestinian perpetrators, who would pay 60 percent.
The attack, which took place on a West Bank highway on August 25, 2001, claimed the lives of Yaniv and Sharon Ben Shalom, a couple, and Sharon’s brother Doron Sviri.
The families had sued the PA and as well as the perpetrators, among them Barghouti.
Palestinian factions to meet in Cairo for reconciliation push
Palestinian factions to meet in Cairo for reconciliation push
Algeria Senate demands changes to law criminalizing French rule
- The Senate said Thursday some articles of the text did not fully reflect the official approach set out by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune
- France has called the bill “clearly hostile”
ALGIERS: Algeria’s Senate on Thursday demanded changes to a law criminalizing French colonial rule, including provisions on reparations, nearly a month after parliament passed the legislation.
On December 24, parliament’s lower house unanimously approved the law declaring France’s colonization of Algeria from 1830 to 1962 a crime and demanding an apology and reparations.
But the Senate said Thursday some articles of the text did not fully reflect the official approach set out by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, who had said Algeria did not need financial reparations from France.
This means a joint committee including members of both chambers will now review the disputed provisions before finalizing the text, as the Senate cannot amend laws passed by the lower house.
France has called the bill “clearly hostile,” coming at a time of diplomatic friction with Algeria.
Relations soured in late 2024 when France officially backed Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara, where Algeria backs the pro-independence Polisario Front.
The bill states that France holds “legal responsibility for its colonial past in Algeria and the tragedies it caused.”
It lists the “crimes of French colonization,” including nuclear tests, extrajudicial killings, “physical and psychological torture,” and the “systematic plundering of resources.”
The bill states that “full and fair compensation for all material and moral damages caused by French colonization is an inalienable right of the Algerian state and people.”
However, Tebboune had said in a speech in December 2024 that Algiers was “not tempted by money, neither euros nor dollars.”
“We demand recognition of the crimes committed in the country” by France, he said. “I am not asking for financial compensation.”
Before taking office, French President Emmanuel Macron had acknowledged that his country’s colonization of Algeria was a “crime against humanity,” but Paris has yet to offer Algiers a formal apology.
Algeria says the war with colonial France killed 1.5 million people. French historians put the death toll lower at 500,000, 400,000 of them Algerian.
