GAZA CITY: Azzam Al-Ahmed, a senior official from Palestine’s Fatah faction, said on Monday that a key meeting Tuesday in the Egypt’s capital Cairo “aims to incorporate all the Palestinian factions as partners and not just spectators as the page of division is folded for the last time.”
Leaders of various Palestinian groups headed for Cairo on Monday ahead of talks. Senior figures from 13 different political factions — including Gaza’s rulers Hamas — are due to meet for the three-day talks, with potential topics of discussion including the formation of a new unity government.
The Hamas delegation will be headed by deputy leader Salah Al-Aruri and its Gaza head Yahya Sinwar. Neither Fatah leader Mahmud Abbas nor Hamas chief Ismail Haniya will attend the meeting.
The talks come as Palestinians face rising tensions with the US over the threatened closure of their office in Washington.
Tensions between Fatah and Hamas have reemerged since they signed a reconciliation deal last month. Fatah has been at loggerheads with Hamas since the militant group 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 threatened closure of their office in Washington 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?”
Wasel Abu Yousef, a senior PLO official, said the talks could last until Thursday.
“I think this meeting will be a huge step toward the removal of all the obstacles to reconciliation, which is supported by everyone,” he told AFP.
The most controversial issue remains security — meaning the future of Hamas’s vast military wing.
Bassem Naim, a top Hamas official, said it was impossible for them to consider giving up their weapons.
He argued that in the West Bank where Abbas’s government is meant to have partial self rule, the Israeli army in reality operates with impunity — including in areas nominally under full Palestinian control.
Key meeting ‘to incorporate all Palestinian factions as partners’
Key meeting ‘to incorporate all Palestinian factions as partners’
Israel confirms ban on 37 NGOs in Gaza
- UN has warned that this will exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory
- Several NGOS have said the requirements contravene international humanitarian law or endanger their independence
JERUSALEM: Israel on Thursday said 37 humanitarian agencies supplying aid in Gaza had not met a deadline to meet “security and transparency standards,” and would be banned from the territory, despite an international outcry.
The international NGOs, which had been ordered to disclose detailed information on their Palestinian staff, will now be required to cease operations by March 1.
The United Nations has warned that this will exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.
“Organizations that have failed to meet required security and transparency standards will have their licenses suspended,” Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism said in a statement.
Several NGOS have said the requirements contravene international humanitarian law or endanger their independence.
Israel says the new regulation aims to prevent bodies it accuses of supporting terrorism from operating in the Palestinian territories.
Prominent humanitarian organizations hit by the ban include Doctors Without Borders (MSF), the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), World Vision International and Oxfam, according to a ministry list.
In MSF’s case, Israel accused it of having two employees who were members of Palestinian militant groups Islamic Jihad and Hamas.
MSF said this week the request to share a list of its staff “may be in violation of Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law” and said it “would never knowingly employ people engaging in military activity.”
‘Critical requirement’
NRC spokesperson Shaina Low told AFP its local staff are “exhausted” and international staff “bring them an extra layer of help and security. Their presence is a protection.”
Submitting the names of local staff is “not negotiable,” she said. “We offered alternatives, they refused,” hse said, of the Israeli regulators.
The ministry said Thursday: “The primary failure identified was the refusal to provide complete and verifiable information regarding their employees, a critical requirement designed to prevent the infiltration of terrorist operatives into humanitarian structures.”
In March, Israel gave NGOs 10 months to comply with the new rules, which demand the “full disclosure of personnel, funding sources, and operational structures.”
The deadline expired on Wednesday.
The 37 NGOs “were formally notified that their licenses would be revoked as of January 1, 2026, and that they must complete the cessation of their activities by March 1, 2026,” the ministry said Thursday.
A ministry spokesperson told AFP that following the revocation of their licenses, aid groups could no longer bring assistance into Gaza from Thursday.
However, they could have their licenses reinstated if they submitted the required documents before March 1.
Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Amichai Chikli said “the message is clear: humanitarian assistance is welcome — the exploitation of humanitarian frameworks for terrorism is not.”
‘Weaponization of bureaucracy’
On Thursday, 18 Israel-based left-wing NGOs denounced the decision to ban their international peers, saying “the new registration framework violates core humanitarian principles of independence and neutrality.”
“This weaponization of bureaucracy institutionalizes barriers to aid and forces vital organizations to suspend operations,” they said.
UN Palestinian refugee agency chief Philippe Lazzarini had said the move sets a “dangerous precedent.”
“Failing to push back against attempts to control the work of aid organizations will further undermine the basic humanitarian principles of neutrality, independence, impartiality and humanity underpinning aid work across the world,” he said on X.
On Tuesday, the foreign ministers of 10 countries, including France and Britain, urged Israel to “guarantee access” to aid in the Gaza Strip, where they said the humanitarian situation remains “catastrophic.”
A fragile ceasefire has been in place since October, following a deadly war waged by Israel in response to Hamas’s unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Nearly 80 percent of buildings in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged by the war, according to UN data.
About 1.5 million of Gaza’s more than two million residents have lost their homes, said Amjad Al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGO Network in Gaza.
