CAIRO: Palestinian factions were meeting on Sunday in El-Alamein, Egypt, to discuss reconciliation efforts amid the increased violence between Israel and Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
The main groups, Fatah and Hamas, have been split since 2007. With multiple reconciliation attempts having failed, expectations for the one-day gathering are low. According to Palestinian media, the meeting in the Egyptian city of El-Alamein on the Mediterranean Sea will explore ways to the division and restore national unity.
The gathering comes amid increasing violence in the West Bank, Israel has been staging near-nightly raids in the occupied areas.
Those raids have resulted in some of the worst fighting in nearly 2 decades in the West Bank. Palestinians also say the Israeli attacks undermine their own security forces and weaken their leadership.
The meeting in Egypt is led and initiated by Abbas and is being attended by other Palestinian leaders including Hamas’s leader Ismail Haniyeh, according to media reports.
Another main group playing a key role in the fighting with Israel, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, boycotted the meeting to protest the areests by the Palestinian Authority of its members, according to Ziyad Al-Nakhala, the group’s leader.
Egypt’s efforts for reconciliation
Cairo has for years acted as a mediator to try to end the differences between Palestinian factions. It also helped broker truce agreements in multiple rounds of war between Israel and Hamas.
