RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says that unless he gets full control over the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, including the group’s weapons, he will “not be responsible for what goes on” there.

Abbas’ comments late Sunday dealt another blow to months of U.S.-backed Egyptian efforts to negotiate a deal that would sideline the Islamic militant Hamas and enable Abbas’ self-rule government to return to Gaza.

Hamas seized Gaza from forces loyal to Abbas in 2007.

Recent talks between Abbas and his rivals failed, mainly because Hamas refuses to disarm. This comes as tensions are rising on the Gaza-Israel border, with Hamas leading mass protests to try to break an Israeli-Egyptian border blockade.

Abbas told leaders of his Fatah movement he has informed Egypt of his demands and is waiting to hear back. </s> Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says that unless he gets full control over the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, including the group’s weapons, he will “not be responsible for what goes on” there.

Abbas’ comments late Sunday dealt another blow to months of U.S.-backed Egyptian efforts to negotiate a deal that would sideline the Islamic militant Hamas and enable Abbas’ self-rule government to return to Gaza.

Hamas seized Gaza from forces loyal to Abbas in 2007.

Recent talks between Abbas and his rivals failed, mainly because Hamas refuses to disarm. This comes as tensions are rising on the Gaza-Israel border, with Hamas leading mass protests to try to break an Israeli-Egyptian border blockade.

Abbas told leaders of his Fatah movement he has informed Egypt of his demands and is waiting to hear back. </s> Abbas says won't return to Gaza unless Hamas cedes control

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says that unless he gets full control over the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, including the group's weapons, he will "not be responsible for what goes on" there.

Abbas' comments late Sunday dealt another blow to months of U.S.-backed Egyptian efforts to negotiate a deal that would sideline the Islamic militant Hamas and enable Abbas' self-rule government to return to Gaza.

Hamas seized Gaza from forces loyal to Abbas in 2007.

Recent talks between Abbas and his rivals failed, mainly because Hamas refuses to disarm. This comes as tensions are rising on the Gaza-Israel border, with Hamas leading mass protests to try to break an Israeli-Egyptian border blockade.

Abbas told leaders of his Fatah movement he has informed Egypt of his demands and is waiting to hear back. </s> Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah tendered his resignation on Tuesday, a spokesman said.

“He and the rest of the government ministers resigned,” Ahmad Shami, one of Hamdallah’s spokesmen, told The Times of Israel, adding that PA President Mahmoud Abbas would now have to decide whether to accept their resignations.

Hamdallah’s decision to resign came two days after the Fatah Central Committee recommended the formation of a government made up of representatives of factions in the Palestine Liberation Organization and independent personalities.

Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up

Shami said that if Abbas accepts their resignations, Hamdallah and the other PA ministers would continue to serve until the formation of a new government.

Fatah Central Committee Member Azzam al-Ahmad said on Sunday that the Palestinians planned to form a new government in response to Hamas not handing over the Gaza Strip to the PA.

“We plan to form a new government of factions soon in response to Hamas’s failure to undertake its national responsibility in handing over the Gaza Strip to the legitimate PA,” Azzam al-Ahmad, a senior Fatah and Palestine Liberation Organization official, told The Times of Israel. “Hamas helped form the last government. This time, it will not participate in its formation or be a part of it.”

Hamas condemned the government’s resignation, saying Abbas was seeking to establish a “separatist government” to serve his interests.

The Palestinians formed the current PA government in 2014 with the support of both PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah and Hamas. Since its establishment, however, Abbas has carried out at least two cabinet reshuffles without Hamas’s consent.

Fatah and Hamas have been at loggerheads since 2007, when the terror group forcibly ousted the Fatah-dominated PA from Gaza.

While the two rival parties have signed multiple agreements to advance reconciliation and bring Gaza and the West Bank under one government, they have not implemented them.

Asked who would serve as prime minister in a new PA government, Ahmad said the Ramallah-based Palestinian leadership including Fatah has not discussed the names of any possible candidates.

“Until now, absolutely no names at all have been discussed. All the rumors are totally false,” the senior Fatah official said. “Even my name has come up and no one has asked me about the job, nor have I asked about it myself.”

In a separate interview with the An-Najah Broadcasting Channel on Monday, Ahmad reiterated that the Palestinians have not spoken about the names of candidates for PA prime minister.

The Kan public broadcaster, however, quoted Palestinian sources on Sunday as assessing that Fatah Central Committee member Muhammed Shtayyeh was the front-runner to become the next PA prime minister.

Shtayyeh, a native of Nablus, formerly served as a Palestinian negotiator and PA minister of public works and housing; he has long worked on government and donor-funded infrastructure projects in the West Bank.

Hamdallah, who previously was the president of An-Najah University, where he once was a professor of the English language, also resigned in 2013 following a dispute with then-Deputy PA prime minister Mohammed Mustafa, according to a Palestinian official, who requested anonymity.

“Mustafa signed an agreement with an international institution that Prime Minister Hamdallah was supposed to sign,” the official said. “Hamdallah then resigned but came back to the job after he was assured he would be in charge of signing agreements with international groups.”

Hamdallah hails from Anabta, a village in the northern West Bank. Three of his children were killed in a car accident between Tulkarem and Nablus in 1998.

The official added that he expected Hamdallah would return to his academic work in the near future.

Abbas has also pledged to hold new parliamentary elections in the coming six months, but how that would be possible in Gaza is unclear.

Hamas won the last parliamentary polls, in 2006, against expectations. Israel, the United States and other Western powers, which all consider Hamas a terrorist organization, rejected the result.

Hamas and Israel have fought three wars in Gaza since then.

Rumors of a new government have been swirling in recent weeks, and Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri attacked such a plan.

“The formation of any government apart from a national consensus one is a continuation of the unilateral actions taken by Fatah,” he tweeted Sunday. “Such a government will enjoy no legitimacy.” </s> "The council of ministers demands from the Hamas movement to immediately cede control over the Gaza Strip," the statement said.

According to the document, the government is ready to take responsibility for Gaza in order to save it from the dangers that surround it and prevent Israel from splitting Palestine.

The statement was issued after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had directly accused Hamas of the bomb attack on Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah's motorcade during his visit to Gaza last week and threatened to impose sanctions against the enclave.

On March 13, an explosion hit a site near Hamdallah's motorcade in the Gaza Strip. Hamdallah himself was not injured in the blast. The Palestinian National Authority placed the blame for the attack on the Hamas movement, which has been governing the Gaza Strip. Hamas, in turn, condemned the attack on Hamdallah's convoy and called on law enforcement agencies to find the perpetrators as soon as possible.

Nabil Shaath, the foreign affairs adviser of Abbas, told Sputnik in February that the intra-Palestinian reconciliation process had been put on hold, because the Hamas movement had not yet relinquished administrative control over the Gaza Strip.

READ MORE: Israeli Tanks Target Hamas Posts in Gaza in Response to Explosions — IDF

Hamas, which is listed as a terrorist organization in a number of countries, including in the United States and Israel, gained control of the Gaza Strip after a short war with Fatah in 2007. Fatah has repeatedly criticized Hamas for dividing the country and preventing the Palestinian Unity Government from ruling the Gaza Strip. </s> Gaza's Islamist leaders Hamas on Saturday publicly accused the rival Palestinian Authority (PA) of planning an assassination attempt against the head of its own government.

PA prime minister Rami Hamdallah, was unhurt when a roadside bomb hit his convoy during a rare visit to Hamas-controlled Gaza last month.

Hamdallah heads the PA's West Bank-based government under the presidency of Mahmud Abbas.

The explosion put an end to an already faltering reconciliation agreement between Hamas and secularists Fatah, which dominates the PA.

Afterwards Abbas accused Hamas of carrying out the bombing.

But on Saturday a spokesman for the Hamas interior ministry in Gaza accused senior PA security officials of orchestrating the attack to destabilise the coastal territory.

"Investigations have shown that senior figures in the General Intelligence Service in Ramallah are the engine of subversive cells that are working to undermine security in the Gaza Strip," spokesman Iyad Buzum told a press conference.

Relations between the two largest Palestinian groups are at a low, six months after they signed a reconciliation deal aimed at ending a decade-long split. </s> Hamas, the de facto ruling party of the Gaza Strip, has pledged to dissolve its administrative committee that runs the besieged coastal enclave and expressed readiness to hold general elections, in a bid for reconciliation with the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA).

A statement from Hamas movement said the decision came in response to recent diplomatic efforts by Egypt to reconcile the rival factions, while PA President Mahmoud Abbas has been calling on Hamas to end the administrative committee, relinquish control of the small territory to the PA, and hold presidential and legislative elections.

Hamas and the Fatah-led PA have been embroiled in a more than a decade-long conflict since 2006, when Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections and a bloody conflict between the two groups broke out.

 Despite numerous attempts at reconciling the groups, Palestinian leadership has repeatedly failed to follow through on promises of reconciliation and holding of long-overdue elections, as both movements have frequently blamed each other for numerous political failures.

The Hamas movement said Sunday it has dissolved its administrative committee — formed earlier this year to the outrage of the PA, agrees to hold general elections for the first time since 2006, enter talks with Fatah, and allow the national reconciliation government to operate in Gaza.

Hamas signed the reconciliation agreement with the PLO in April 2014, which was to pave the way for a general election by the end of 2014. However, a devastating 50-day Israeli attack on Gaza that year, as well as a dispute over payment of the salaries of tens of thousands of Hamas security forces, first blocked progress on the deal towards reconciliation.

The Palestinian political crisis has since only continued to worsen, and Hamas said it formed the committee after the consensus government failed to take responsibility for Gaza’s administration. The PA alleges that Hamas is attempting to form a “shadow government” to run Gaza independent of the West Bank.

In recent months, the PA has been also been accused of deliberately sending the impoverished Gaza Strip further into a humanitarian catastrophe — by slashing funding for Israeli fuel, medicine, and salaries for civil servants and former prisoners — in order to wrest control of the territory from Hamas.

Last month, Abbas threatened to undertake further repressive measures against the impoverished territory should Hamas not unconditionally abide by the PA’s demands to end the administrative committee, relinquish control of the enclave to the PA, and hold presidential and legislative elections.

Following Hamas’ acceptance of these key conditions on Sunday, senior Fatah official Mahmoud Aloul told Reuters news agency that he welcomed cautiously Hamas’s position. “If this is Hamas statement, then this is a positive sign,” he reportedly said. “We in Fatah movement are ready to implement reconciliation.”

 Fatah Central Committee member Azzam al-Ahmed also welcomed Hamas’ decision to dissolve the administrative committee, he told PA-owned Wafa news agency.

Al-Ahmed, who is currently in Cairo for Egyptian-led reconciliation talks with Hamas, told Wafa that a lengthy meeting was held between the Fatah delegation in Cairo with the head of the Egyptian intelligence service, Minister Khaled Fawzi, in which they reviewed the continuous efforts exerted by Egypt to end the Palestinian internal split.

Al-Hamad confirmed reports that the Fatah delegation met with the Hamas leadership, and “hailed Hamas’s call for the unity government to resume its normal work in Gaza as well as its approval to hold presidential and legislative elections,” according to Wafa’s report.

The Fatah official also said that there will be a bilateral meeting between Fatah and Hamas officials followed by a meeting of all the Palestinian factions that signed the May 2011 reconciliation agreement “in order to begin practical steps to implement the deal,” and expressed hope that the coming days would “witness tangible practical steps,” Wafa said.

Nickolay Mladenov, United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, also released a statement welcoming Hamas’ announcement. “I welcome the recent statement by Hamas announcing the dissolving of the Administrative Committee in Gaza and agreement to allow the Government of National Consensus to assume its responsibilities in Gaza,” he said.

“I commend the Egyptian authorities for their tireless efforts in creating this positive momentum. All parties must seize this opportunity to restore unity and open a new page for the Palestinian people,” the UN envoy continued. “The United Nations stands ready to assist all efforts in this respect. It is critical that the grave humanitarian situation in Gaza, most notably the crippling electricity crisis, be addressed as a priority.”

The development also came after head of the Hamas movement’s politburo Ismail Haniyeh and other high-ranking Hamas members met with Egyptian intelligence officials in Cairo last week, with talks focusing on a readiness to work toward national unity.

Hamas leadership told the Egyptians they would allow the Palestinian national reconciliation government to take charge of Gaza and carry out elections, so long as all Palestinian factions hold a conference in Cairo afterwards to elect a national government responsible for the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem.

An Egyptian source close to the intelligence services told Israeli news daily Haaretz that Hamas is trying to prove to Egypt that it is not obstructing reconciliation and is responding to demands, hoping to reap the benefits if and when the talks falter on the PA’s part.

Hamas has sought to improve relations with Cairo in recent months by increasing cross border security, including the construction of the military buffer zone, in hopes that Egypt will ease its enforcement of Israel’s brutal, decade-long siege of the territory and open up the Rafah border crossing. A Fatah delegation sent by Abbas to Cairo also discussed Egypt’s efforts to reconcile the Palestinians on Saturday.

Meanwhile, Abbas arrived in New York on Sunday to take part in the proceedings of the 72nd session of the United Nations General Assembly. He is to meet US President Donald Trump there on Wednesday, ahead of the Palestinian president’s speech at the UN Thursday. </s> RAMALLAH: Palestinian officials say President Mahmoud Abbas has decided to shake up his government.

The move is the latest sign of failure in more than a decade of attempts to reconcile with the rival Hamas movement.

The officials say Abbas appointed a four-member committee from his Fatah movement on Sunday to consult with political factions about forming a new government.

The three officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing internal deliberations.

The official Wafa news agency said Fatah had decided to form a political government to replace the current Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah's Cabinet of technocrats.

Hamdallah's government was formed in 2013 following a power sharing agreement with Hamas. But the government couldn't assume its responsibilities in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip ruled due to deep disputes. </s> Hamas said on Sunday it had agreed to steps toward resolving a decade-long split with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah, announcing it would dissolve a body seen as a rival government and was ready to hold elections.

The statement comes after Hamas leaders held talks with Egyptian officials last week, and with the Gaza Strip run by the Palestinian Islamist movement facing a mounting humanitarian crisis.

Hamas said it had agreed to key demands made by Fatah: dissolving the so-called "administrative committee" created in March, while saying it was ready for elections and negotiations toward a unity government.

It called on the Palestinian Authority government based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank "to come to Gaza to exercise its functions and carry out its duties immediately". Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh agreed to take such steps in talks with Egyptian officials in Cairo last week, a Hamas official has told AFP.

It was unclear, however, whether the steps would result in further concrete action toward ending the deep division with Fatah. Hamas for now continues to run a de facto separate administration in the Gaza Strip and is in charge of the security forces there.

Previous attempts to resolve the split have repeatedly failed. Abbas’s Fatah welcomed the announcement, saying it followed "extensive meetings" between its own representatives and Egyptian intelligence officials.

Fatah official Azzam al-Ahmad said a bilateral meeting with Hamas would be organised to begin working out a way forward. "There will be tangible practical steps in the next few days, starting with the Palestinian national unity government resuming its work according to law in Gaza as it does in the West Bank, in order to continue its efforts to relieve the suffering of our people in the strip and work towards lifting the unjust blockade," Ahmad told official Palestinian news agency Wafa.

The Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli blockade for around a decade, while its border with Egypt has also remained largely closed in recent years. Abbas is currently in New York for the UN General Assembly meeting, where he is set to speak on Wednesday. — </s> The Palestinian Authority on Tuesday expressed fear that the talk about easing restrictions on the Gaza Strip was part of an Israeli-Palestinian “conspiracy” to transform the Palestinian cause into a “humanitarian issue.”



The PA, which has been imposing its own financial sanctions on the Gaza Strip, also expressed fear that the easing of restrictions would embolden Hamas and tighten its grip over the coastal enclave.

Palestinian Authority officials in Ramallah claimed that the US administration and the Israeli government were now talking about improving the living conditions of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as a way of “undermining the Palestinian national project, including the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state.”The PA leadership has been facing growing pressure from Palestinians to lift the sanctions that President Mahmoud Abbas imposed on the Gaza Strip about one year ago. The sanctions include, among other things, cutting off salaries to thousands of PA employees, as well as financial assistance to hundreds of families in the Gaza Strip. The PA initially said it would stop paying for the electricity and fuel that Israel supplies to the Gaza Strip, but later partially backtracked.The PA’s sanctions on the Gaza Strip have triggered an unprecedented wave of protests in some parts of the West Bank, with Palestinian protesters demanding an end to the punitive measures.Some PA representatives said they were hoping that the sanctions would aggravate the humanitarian crisis to a point where Palestinians would revolt against Hamas, which violently seized the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007.PA officials have repeatedly emphasized in recent weeks that they will not lift the sanctions unless Hamas relinquishes control over the Gaza Strip and allows the government of Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah to assume its civilian and security responsibilities there.PA officials in Ramallah have been following with increased concern statements by Israeli and US administration officials about the need to prevent a humanitarian and economic crisis in the Gaza Strip.On Tuesday, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for the PA presidency, described the ideas that are being floated around concerning the Gaza Strip as “illusions.”These ideas, he said, were aimed at “abolishing the Palestinian national entity and killing the [Palestinian] national project of establishing our independent Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital.”Abu Rudaineh claimed that the US and Israel were seeking to exploit the crisis in the Gaza Strip for “political and humanitarian” purposes.Referring to a report about an Israeli plan to build a sea port in Cyprus for cargo ships destined for the Gaza Strip, the PA spokesperson said that such “suspicious” ideas and proposals should only come in the context of a comprehensive political solution that is based on international resolutions.“This is an attempt to create coexistence with the occupation and evade the explosive reality,” Abu Rudeineh said.Channel 2 reported on Monday that Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman had advanced the port plan during his recent visit to Cyprus.According to the report, the plan would include construction of a special pier for cargo ships carrying goods destined for the Gaza Strip. They would be checked with the help of an Israeli monitoring mechanism to ensure that no weapons were being smuggled into the Hamas-controlled coastal enclave.However, a government spokesman in Cyprus was quoted on Tuesday as saying, “There is no agreement over the construction of a port in Cyprus to send, under Israeli control, goods to the Gaza Strip, but there is a request which is being considered.”Asked to comment on the Cyprus port idea, a top Abbas aide said, “We don’t understand what’s going on; has Cyprus become an Israeli province? Who gave Israel the authority to involve Cyprus in matters related to a sea port or a prisoner exchange agreement [between Hamas and Israel]?”Some officials and political analysts in Ramallah said they were convinced that the increased talk about solving the crisis in the Gaza Strip was part of the US administration’s yet-to-be-announced peace plan. They believe that the plan, which US President Donald Trump has called the “deal of the century,” is aimed at “solidifying” the split between the West Bank and Gaza Strip.“Israel and this US administration don’t want to see the West Bank and Gaza Strip united,” said a veteran Fatah official. “But what they need to understand is that any gestures to the Gaza Strip will play into the hands of Hamas, prolong its rule and absolve of its responsibilities towards the residents living there. This would be a severe blow to President Abbas’s efforts over the past few years to undermine Hamas.”ABDEL NASSER Al-Najjar, a former chairman of the Fatah-affiliated Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, said he was worried about reports to the effect that Hamas was prepared to accept US and Israeli ideas to improve the living conditions of the Palestinians and ease restrictions on the Gaza Strip.“It would be a disaster for the Palestinians if the new American peace initiative would be presented as a plan to lift sanctions and improve living conditions in the Gaza Strip,” Najjar wrote in an article published in the PA’s daily Al-Ayyam newspaper. “Obviously, the Palestinian cause is at a crossroads and the Palestinian leadership is facing immense pressure. But in the end, it is the Palestinians who decide. Even if the whole world accepts it, the [US] peace plan will not pass without the Palestinians’ consent.”Najjar and other Palestinians, including several Abbas loyalists, urged the PA leadership to remove the sanctions against the Gaza Strip to avoid a situation where the Palestinians would have to permanently live with two separate entities.“It would be better for us to share hunger than to destroy the Palestinian cause,” Najjar wrote, appealing to the PA leadership to lift the sanctions and reconsider its entire policy towards the Gaza Strip.Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction, in a statement published in Ramallah, claimed that some Hamas leaders seemed to support Israeli and US proposals to focus on solving the humanitarian and economic crisis in the Gaza Strip.Fatah also claimed that Hamas leaders, who it did not mention by name, have been sending “direct messages to the US and America” to discuss the proposals under the pretext of finding humanitarian solutions to the crisis in the Gaza Strip.In its statement, Fatah warned Hamas that dealing with the Israeli and American proposals was tantamount to “betraying the cause, the land, Jerusalem and the al-Aqsa [Mosque].”Palestinian political analyst Amjad Subhi said that the talk about solving the crisis in the Gaza Strip has worried Abbas and several senior officials in Ramallah. “The Palestinian Authority sees this as a gift to Hamas,” he said. “Abbas and his government believe that Israel and the US want to keep Hamas in power in the Gaza Strip so that the Palestinians would never be able to establish their own unified and independent state.”Subhi and other sources in Ramallah said that the PA leaders were already concerned about Egypt’s recent decision to reopen the Rafah border crossing along its shared border with the Gaza Strip. Abbas is even reported to have sent messages to President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi protesting against the reopening of the Rafah terminal.Abbas, according to an informed source in Ramallah, is particularly worried that his political arch-rival, Mohammed Dahlan, would benefit from the Egyptian gesture. Dahlan, who is based in the United Arab Emirates and has close ties with Sisi, is said to have played a vital role in convincing the Egyptian authorities to ease travel restrictions on the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.Sisi dismissed Abbas’s messages and said Egypt was acting on the basis of what’s good for its national security and interests, the source said.“We have reached an absurd situation where Israel, the US, and many international parties are doing their utmost to find a solution to the problems in the Gaza Strip and alleviate the suffering of the people, while the Palestinian president and his government are working hard to keep the sanctions and intensify the crisis,” the source added.

var cont = `Join Jerusalem Post Premium Plus now for just $5 and upgrade your experience with an ads-free website and exclusive content. Click here>>



`; document.getElementById("linkPremium").innerHTML = cont; (function (v, i){ });
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says the PA will take no further responsibility for the Gaza Strip unless Hamas hands over full control.