Hamas prefers to participate in reconciliation talks with Israel than with the Palestinian Authority (PA), a top advisor for PA President Mahmoud Abbas i24NEWS in an exclusive interview.
"Hamas seems to prefer reconciliation with Israel rather than reconciliation with its own people and with the PLO, this is very important, we all need to arrange the Palestinian home and then look for deals with foreign entities," the PA & # 39; s Supreme sharia judge Mahmoud al-Habash.
UN-Egypt-led efforts to achieve a long-term cease-fire between Israel and Hamas have been under way for months to put an end to the violence along the border and the tensions in the impoverished Palestinian enclave. to decrease.
At least 193 Palestinians, including 50 Hamas members, were killed in confrontations with Israel Defense Forces (IDF) at the Gaza border since the weekly March demonstration of return on March 30 began.
The peace talks initially focused on providing a temporary cease-fire after an attack by Palestinian missile attacks and retaliatory actions of Israeli air strikes in July and August, but the two sides began indirect talks by Egypt to investigate the possibility of Peace agreement for the long term.
In what appeared to be his very first interview with an Israeli news publication, Hamas & # 39; leader in the Gaza Strip Yahya Sinwar called for a ceasefire with Israel, saying that another war is not in the interests of his group neither of the people of Gaza.
Yet Al-Habash said i24NEWS that "Hamas" desire to open a channel of negotiations with Israel is an old one, not a new one. "
The Egyptian-led initiative has simultaneously tried to promote reconciliation between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, but the tensions between the factions remain high, with the Abbas government continuing to impose sanctions on the Gaza Strip.
The PA leader has been putting pressure on Hamas in recent months by refusing to pay the salaries of its rivals and the electricity supplied by Israel in the Strip, leading to a severe power crisis and a worsening humanitarian situation in the enclave.
At the same time, Abbas felt more and more excluded by ongoing negotiations between Israel and Hamas, proposing that sanctions should be terminated only if Hamas agreed to abandon control of the Gaza Strip.
Al-Habash, who is also Abbas's foremost adviser on religious and Islamic affairs, explains that these negotiations are playing a role in Israel in the further distribution of Palestinians.
"I think Hamas leadership thinks they are sending positive messages to Israel, but they are messages of a negative nature to the Palestinian cause, they are disastrous and their goal is an Israeli goal that aims to make the Palestinian cause geographically and politically disconnect. "
Israel prefers Hamas over Abbas
Former Israeli Interior Minister Ofir Pines, who was part of an Israeli delegation who met Abbas last month, reiterated al-Habash's remarks and suggested that there was an unwritten agreement between Hamas and Netanyahu that Gaza would be out of the control of the Palestinian would remain Authority.
"From the moment that Mahmoud Abbas takes over full control of Hamas and Gaza, Israel will not be able to say that it has no partner for peace," Pines told i24NEWS, explaining that until that time Israel can maintain that there is no legitimate is. representative of the Palestinian people.
But al-Habash remained hopeful that Egypt understood the priority of Palestinian reconciliation before the possibility of a long-lasting peace with Israel.
"There is an agreement between us and our brothers in Egypt who has the priority [Palestinian] reconciliation talks and not the truce, "he said.
The Supreme Sharia judge stated that peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and for the region can only be achieved after the Palestinians have united.
"Peace can not be achieved with any Arab party without a just solution to the Palestinian question, they have to understand this." The address, the beginning and the end, is Palestine. "When the Palestinian cause is resolved in a just and comprehensive way based on the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, we can talk about regional peace. "he said.
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