Fatah rejects proposal negotiated with Hamas to create a Gaza management committee

Negotiations between Palestinian factions in Cairo on the creation of an independent governing committee in Gaza have come to an end when Fatah rejected the final proposal as it did not meet its demands, sources in the Islamic terrorist group Hamas said.

"They rejected the idea, insisting on extending the work of Muhamad Mustafa (the prime minister of the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority) in Gaza," said Hamas political bureau member Basem Naim.

In a brief statement, Fatah confirmed that it had informed Egypt of its rejection of the proposal to create the committee, claiming that it "enshrines division," without giving further details as to why.

Naim said Fatah had rejected the creation of the committee, which was intended to be made up of around 15 Palestinian experts independent of the two parties, despite knowing that “Netanyahu rejects both Fatah and Hamas” when it comes to managing the devastated enclave after the war.

Both sides, but especially Hamas, were positive last week about the creation of the then-called Community Support Committee, and said that all that was left was to sign the agreement. To do so, they had to agree on who would be part of it, an element that ended up frustrating the negotiations.

Hamas claims that everything was precipitated by the insistence of secularists that Mustafa, the PA's prime minister in the West Bank, extend his position to Gaza. Fatah has not commented on the matter.

"The alternative (to the committee) is for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to take the stage and take full political action," Fatah said in its statement, calling for this body to be in charge of talks on the future of Gaza.

The PLO brings together various Palestinian political and paramilitary movements, with Fatah as its main component and driving force. Hamas and other groups such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad are not part of it.

In its statement, Fatah said it did not intend to close its channels of negotiation with Hamas, although it believed that the authority to negotiate the future of Gaza should now rest with the PLO. This, Palestinian sources said, also includes talks with Israel on the course of the war.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has strongly rejected Hamas's management of Gaza since the war, so the formation of this independent body posed a new bargaining chip for the Palestinian side.

In an interview with Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV, Naim said the Palestinian national project had been "hijacked by political elites" and that those who rejected the agreement were seeking to "derail" the Palestinian people's path to freedom.

"From those who signed the Oslo Accords we only expect a selfish approach that contradicts national interests," said the Hamas politician, in a direct attack on Fatah.

The signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 by the PLO, with Fatah as its leading exponent, with Israel, was considered by organizations such as Hamas a betrayal of Palestinian interests, marking a milestone in the antagonistic relationship between the two movements.

This surged when the Islamists won the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006, which led to the expulsion of the secularists from Gaza in 2007 through a violent coup d'état, leaving the governments of the territories divided: Hamas in Gaza and the PA, in the hands of Fatah, in the West Bank, without the Palestinians having returned to the polls since then. EFE and Aurora