Top Fatah leader calls on Turkiye to mediate for unity between PLO, Hamas

A senior leader of the ruling Fatah party in the occupied West Bank has recommended that Turkiye mediate between itself and Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, in an effort to revive reconciliation efforts to unify rival Palestinian factions amid Israel’s ongoing bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

According to the Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak on Thursday, Fatah’s general secretary Jibril Rajoub revealed to it during a visit to Istanbul that “We told our Turkish counterparts that we wanted to end the [internal Palestinian] division and achieve national unity”.

Calling Turkiye “a very large regional state and a Muslim country that can play a major role in ending division and establishing unity”, Rajoub expressed the Palestinian leadership’s desire for “Turkish officials to motivate our brothers in Hamas to review the situation from a political perspective”.

He expressed Fatah’s belief that Hamas is part of the fabric of Palestinian society, and called the attack by Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades against Israel on 7 October “another heroic epic and a defensive war”.

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Rajoub reiterated the necessity for Palestinians to establish a state within the 1967 borders, and to find a resolution to the conflict with Israel, citing it as a key way to achieve unity. “Palestinians need to take collective decisions by supporting the resistance together. We need to convince the International Criminal Court, the United Nations, and the whole world that the Palestinian state exists”.

At the same time, the top Fatah official asserted that such achievements “cannot happen without national unity. This Palestinian union will also be an organisation that respects international laws. This Palestinian state will be the guarantee of both regional stability and world peace. We are working on this. We want our brothers in Hamas to take action with this perspective.”

Reconciliation between Fatah – otherwise known as the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) or the Palestinian Authority (PA) – and Hamas has long been discussed over the past sixteen years since divisions ramped up and the latter group forcibly took over the Gaza Strip from the PA.

Apparent efforts to reconcile have taken place especially over the past few years, but have often been skewed or failed to bear results, with both rival Palestinian factions failing to hold long-awaited elections throughout the Palestinian territories due to a number of disagreements.

For years, Turkiye has also presented itself as the key mediator between both Fatah and Hamas, meeting the PA’s president Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh.

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