Hamas and Fatah pledged unity on Thursday against the Israeli plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank. Two rival Palestinian parties held a press conference, an event, together.
‘We will put in place all the mechanisms to ensure national unity’ against the Israeli project, said Fatah secretary general Jibril Rajoub, saying he wanted to speak ‘with one voice’ at this conference with Saleh al-Arouri, a Hamas executive, speaking by videoconference from Beirut.
‘I assert that the position of the Hamas leadership is for the national consensus. This joint press conference is also an opportunity to start a new stage in the service of our people in these perilous moments’, added Mr. Arouri.
Fatah, a secular ruling party in the West Bank, and Hamas, an armed Islamist movement at the head of the Gaza Strip, have been at loggerheads since 2007, the year in which Hamas took control of this Palestinian enclave after a near civil war, a year after winning the Palestinian legislative elections.
Hamas had recently called for the Palestinian political class to unite against the American plan for the Middle East, which was rejected as a whole by the Palestinians when it was presented in late January and also denounced by the UN, the Europeans and the League. Arab.
Demilitarized Palestinian State
The American plan provides for the annexation by Israel of settlements and the Jordan Valley in the West Bank, territory occupied since 1967 by the Hebrew state, and the creation of a demilitarized Palestinian state on a territory limited with the West Bank and the strip of Gaza, some 50 km apart, linked by a corridor.
The unity government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged in the spring to announce from July 1 its strategy to implement the Trump administration’s plan.
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