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Palestinian reconciliation deal signed

By The World ⋅ May 4, 2011 ⋅ Post a comment
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The leaders of the two main Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, have signed a reconciliation deal to establish a unity government and end four years of hostilities. Speaking at the ceremony in Cairo, the President of the Palestinian Authority and head of the Fatah party, Mahmoud Abbas, said Palestinians had turned the dark page of division. Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said the goal was an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Matthew Bell reports from Cairo. Download MP3


Read tweets about the Palestinian unity deal




Discussion

One comment for “Palestinian reconciliation deal signed”

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_Y6L6FTDBJYFKOHEZCN6BO6ZEGQ dorn

    In covering the Fatah-Hamas pact today (Wed, 4 May), Matthew Bell asserted that Mahmoud Abbas’ PA was embarrassed by revelations in the Pali leaks that it offered big concessions to Israel, and got nothing in return. The supposed Palestinians concessions were a sham. They were never really offered, and were at best a talking point – that PA officials disavowed privately, long before they denied them publicly. See the analysis by Fair Witness, a Christian group:
    http://www.christianfairwitness.com/
    What is clear is that newspapers like the NY Times, which have a traditional pro-Palestinian bent, rushed to distort Pal leaks to paint the PA as conciliatory, and Israel as hardline.

    It is remarkable that The World can ignore so much that the PA says publicly, including
    (1) It will never recognize Israel as a Jewish homeland;
    (2) It officially denies any Jewish connection to Jerusalem;
    (3) It names town square after perpetrators of the worst terror attacks;
    (4) It demands resettlement of Arab refugees (and their descendants) in pre-1967 Israel, alongside a Judenrein West Bank. This impossible demand denies the rights of the Jewish refugees from Arab lands, and runs counter to the way all other population exchanges have been settled worldwide.

    Finally, Bell talked of Hamas refusing to recognize the legitimacy of Israel. Hamas goes way beyond that, calling for the destruction of Israel, and the murder/ethnic cleansing of all its Jews (see the charter). But even Fatah denies Israel’s legitimacy, and it indoctrinates its youth for the step by step destruction of Israel, in accordance with Arafat’s policy of stages.