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Prime Minister Rami al-Hamdallah chaired the first meeting of the Palestinian cabinet in the Gaza Strip in three years on Tuesday, in a move toward reconciliation between the Fatah Party and the resistance group Hamas.
The cabinet session was the first in Gaza since 2014, Hamdallah told his ministers, and a major step in a reconciliation process promoted by neighboring Egypt and other Arab countries, Reuters reported.
“Today, we stand before an important, historical moment as we begin to get over our wounds, put our differences aside and place the higher national interest above all else,” Hamdallah said.
Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 in fighting with Fatah forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas and has run the enclave of two million people since then.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meeting legislators from his right-wing Likud Party, said the Palestinians were engaging in “fictitious reconciliations.”
Hamas last month dissolved its Gaza shadow government. But while it handed over administrative responsibilities to a unity government originally formed three years ago, its armed wing remains the dominant force in Gaza.
Hamas criticized Abbas’s decision to await the outcome of talks Fatah plans to hold with the group in the next two weeks before lifting sanctions he has imposed on Gaza.
“The government has assumed its responsibilities in Gaza and, therefore, delay is not justified,” Hamas Spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said.
“There is no excuse for delaying or undermining measures that would ease the suffering of Gaza’s people.”
Abbas halted payments for Israeli-supplied electricity to the enclave in June, a step that has led to long daily blackouts, and he also cut salaries for Gaza civil servants.
Abbas told Egyptian TV station CBC on Monday there could be only “one state, one regime, one law and one weapon” in the Gaza Strip, reiterating a long-held position that security should be only in the hands of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which he heads, and that the PA must control border crossing points.
But Hamas’ top leader said the group will not give up its weapons. In an interview with Egypt’s private On TV, Ismail Haniyeh said Tuesday that Hamas has “the right to possess weapons and resist the occupation with all forms of resistance.”
The fate of Hamas’ large arsenal of rockets, mortar shells and automatic weapons is a major sticking point in the reconciliation talks that began on Monday.