The move drew a sharp response from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who warned Abbas that his alliance with Hamas would doom peace efforts.

The deal announced Monday in Doha, Qatar, removes a major stumbling block to carrying out a reconciliation accord signed by the two Palestinian movements last year. The understanding, brokered by the emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad Bin Khalifa al-Thani, was reached in talks he hosted between Abbas, who heads Fatah, and Khaled Meshal, the exiled political leader of Hamas.

In a statement, both sides said that Abbas would lead an interim government “of independent technocrats . . . whose task will be to facilitate presidential and parliamentary elections and begin the reconstruction of Gaza.”

Abbas promised “to implement this agreement as soon as possible,” and Meshal said “we are serious about healing the wounds . . . to reunite our people on the foundation of political partnership.”

Fatah and Hamas were deadlocked for months over who would be prime minister of the interim government. Hamas rejected Salam Fayyad, the Western-backed prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, because he had led a crackdown on Islamist group in the West Bank.

Having Abbas at the helm of the interim government, holding the title of prime minister as well as president, could help preserve Western support, including crucial financial aid, for the Palestinian Authority.

The European Union, one of the major financial backers of the Palestinian Authority, said it looked forward to continuing its support, provided the new government was committed to non-violence, recognized Israel and accepted previous agreements and a negotiated peace settlement with Israel.

Hamas, which for years carried out deadly suicide bombings and has fired rockets into Israel, rejects those conditions. Hamas is considered a terrorist group by Israel, the United States and the European Union and has been boycotted by much of the West.

A State Department spokeswoman said that U.S. officials had not had a chance to talk to Palestinian officials or review details of the deal. “We are not going to give a grade to this thing until we have a chance to talk to Palestinian Authority leaders about the implications,” spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said during the department’s regular daily news briefing.

Netanyahu warned Abbas that carrying out the pact with Hamas would mean that he will “join forces with the enemies of peace.”

“You can’t have it both ways,” Netanyahu said. “It’s either a pact with Hamas or peace with Israel.”

Peace efforts have been stalled for well over a year. Exploratory talks last month hosted by Jordan failed to produce progress toward renewed negotiations, and Abbas is considering whether to continue those meetings.

Under the terms of the Fatah-Hamas accord, the interim government, composed of professionals unaffiliated with either faction, is to prepare for elections in May, although after months of delay the timing of that vote remains uncertain. The government also is supposed to lead efforts to help rebuild areas of the Gaza Strip heavily damaged by an Israeli war against Hamas in 2008 and 2009.

Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior aide to Abbas, said that the joint government would be “a technical government more than a political one” and that diplomatic affairs would “remain with the presidency and the Palestine Liberation Organization.”

Azzam al-Ahmad, a senior Fatah official, said he hoped the new government could be announced at a Feb. 18 meeting of Palestinian factions.

Hamas won the last Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006, and it routed Fatah in a brief factional war in the Gaza Strip in June 2007, seizing control of the territory. Since then, Fatah has led the Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank, with each faction jailing activists, closing offices and banning demonstrations by its rival.

With Syria in turmoil, the exiled political leaders of Hamas, based for years in Damascus, have left the country as the movement seeks to realign itself in a shifting Middle East. Meshal, who has been staying in Qatar, visited Jordan last month with the Qatari crown prince, signaling a thaw in relations. Jordan had deported Meshal and banned Hamas in 1999.

WP

Presidential and parliament elections are envisioned for late spring, though a date has not been set.

Elections are at the center of reconciliation between the Islamic militant Hamas and Fatah, the movement of internationally backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Hamas won parliament elections in 2006 and wrested control of Gaza from Abbas by force a year later. The Gaza office of the Central Elections Commission was closed after the 2007 takeover. It was reopened Tuesday.

In a related development Israeli troops detained a Hamas legislator in the West Bank early Tuesday in the fifth such arrest in as many days, the Islamic militant group said.

Hamas has accused Israel of trying to sabotage possible Palestinian elections, the centerpiece of reconciliation attempts between Hamas and the rival Fatah movement .

Israeli military officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Israel considers Hamas a terrorist organization. The group has carried out scores of deadly attacks against Israelis, but has largely held its fire in recent years.

Hamas said that in the latest incident, lawmaker Abdel Jaber Fuqaha was taken from his home in the West Bank city of Ramallah early Tuesday. Fuqaha is the fifth Hamas lawmaker to be arrested since last week, Hamas said.

Currently, 24 of 45 Hamas legislators from the West Bank are in Israeli detention on charges of membership in an illegal organization.

Hamas lawmakers have been subject to arrest by Israel since the group competed in Palestinian parliament elections in 2006, defeating Fatah. Several lawmakers have been detained repeatedly.

Ismail Ashkar, a leading Hamas lawmaker, accused Israel of trying to sabotage reconciliation efforts.

“Every time we move toward reconciliation and reactivating the Palestinian parliament, we see Israel targeting our lawmakers in the West Bank,” Ashkar said.

Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat, a leader in Fatah, condemned the recent arrests as a “flagrant act of aggression” that undermines prospects for peace. “With these actions, Israel exposes the farcical nature of its peace rhetoric,” he said.

After Hamas’ 2006 election victory, repeated attempts at power-sharing between the rivals failed. Hamas seized control of Gaza by force in 2007, leaving Abbas with only the West Bank where he launched a crackdown on his rivals.

In recent months, the two sides have been trying to reconcile, but have had trouble moving forward because of continued distrust. Next week, Abbas is to meet with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Cairo to try to break the impasse.

CBS/ AP

The last meeting between President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Cairo in May yielded an agreement aimed at reuniting the Palestinian territories under a single government that would oversee new elections set for May 2012. There has been no progress towards implementation since then.

Hamas defeated Fatah in a 2006 parliamentary election and has run the Gaza Strip since 2007, when it seized control of the territory from the Abbas administration.

Since then, the Iran- and Syria-backed group has built its own government and security forces, complicating any attempt at reuniting Gaza with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority.

Abbas, in comments carried by the Palestinian news agency WAFA, said there were “no differences between us now”. Meshaal, who lives in exile in Damascus, said, “We have opened in a new page of partnership.”

Azzam al-Ahmed, a senior Fatah official, said the leaders would hold another meeting to continue discussions on the new government and other issues.

Abbas wants the head of his Ramallah administration, the independent former World Bank economist Salam Fayyad, to stay on as prime minister. That choice is rejected by Hamas and there has been recent speculation Abbas is now willing to give way.

Fatah and Hamas representatives also said there was agreement that elections should happen in May as agreed in the deal. But analysts doubt whether the vote will happen if the sides have not formed a government by then.

In a sign of some tangible progress, the sides announced that an all-encompassing Palestinian leadership body tasked with reforming the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) would hold its first meeting on December 22. The body was first envisioned by a 2005 agreement among Palestinian factions.

The PLO, led by Abbas, was founded in 1964 and is recognised as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people internationally.

Hamas is not currently part of the PLO, which is dominated by the Fatah movement. Hamas, which is shunned by the West for its hostility to Israel, believes that joining the PLO would bolster its international standing.

“It’s been a long wait but God willing it will finally happen,” said Izzat al-Rishq, a Hamas official, referring to Dec. 22 meeting.

“This is the start of the participation of Hamas in the PLO,” said Hany al-Masri, a Palestinian political commentator based in Ramallah who has been involved in efforts to foster reconciliation. “It’s not the end of the road, but it’s a step.”

Israel has opposed the Palestinians’ unity efforts. It briefly withheld tax revenues collected on behalf of Abbas’s Palestinian Authority earlier this year in response to the unity agreement.

Israel took a similar step this month following the Palestinians’ successful bid to join the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO. Fayyad said on Thursday that the Palestinian Authority was “fast approaching the point of being completely incapacitated” by Israel’s freeze on tax revenues.

Reuters

“The deal was a blow to our hopes,” said Issa Karake, a Palestinian official in the Fatah-controlled West Bank responsible for prisoners. “The Palestinian people paid a heavy price … for Schalit’s captivity. They should have insisted,” he said, echoing calls by other prisoner activists.

The Palestinian criticism is a stunning turn, considering Gaza’s Hamas rulers pulled off the most lopsided prisoner exchange in Israel’s history. In the Egyptian-mediated deal, Hamas will exchange Sgt. Gilad Schalit for some 1,027 Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons in two phases. Schalit has been held for five years.

They include some 300 prisoners serving life sentences for involvement in deadly attacks on Israelis such as suicide bombings in buses and bars. For Palestinians, that is considered a Hamas achievement because the Jewish state has historically balked at releasing those responsible for killing Israelis.

The criticism has come as details emerge of the deal. A Hamas official said Thursday that 178 of the 450 Palestinians to be freed in the first phase of a swap for a captured Israeli soldier will not be allowed to return to their homes in the West Bank, Gaza or east Jerusalem, suggesting a substantial number may face deportation.

Most of the 178 are prisoners who lived in the West Bank or east Jerusalem but will now be sent to the Gaza Strip, which is sealed off from Israel by a fence.

The head of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency, Yoram Cohen, has said Hamas agreed to Israel’s demand that some 250 of the 1,000 freed prisoners not be allowed to return to their homes in the West Bank, where they might more easily carry out new attacks on Israeli targets. Most of these prisoners will be sent to Gaza, and some 40 will be deported outside the Palestinian territories altogether.

Israel pressed for the deportation of Palestinian prisoners who they worried would pose a security risk to the Jewish state if they were released back into the West Bank, in particular, which hugs Israel’s east. Most of those would be Palestinians who caused Israeli deaths or masterminded deadly attacks.

Hamas also failed to secure the release of top Palestinian political leaders, convicted of masterminding deadly attacks. They include Marwan Barghouti, a leader of the rival Fatah group, who could run for the Palestinian presidency if he is released, and Ahmad Saadat, the leader of the small but influential Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. And they include some of Hamas’ own leaders such as Abdullah Barghouti, a bomb maker who Israel said was responsible for the deaths of more than 60 people.

Top Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar said they haggled name-by-name with Israeli officials.

“With some, we managed to overcome the obstacle. But with others we couldn’t,” he said on Egyptian television.

The case of prisoners in Israeli jails is deeply sensitive for Palestinians. Most have either served time in an Israeli jail or know somebody who has. And while the crimes the men were sentenced for were violent — and deadly — Palestinians see them as political prisoners who has served unduly long sentences.

Similarly, Schalit’s plight mesmerized Israel, a country where most adults serve in the military and see their government as responsible for ensuring their safety while serving. His release has prompted widespread celebrations but also deep unease that releasing Palestinian militants may invite more attacks.

On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked Egypt’s military ruler, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi for his country’s role in helping mediate the deal.

“Your help warms the heart of every Israeli,” he said in a statement sent to reporters.

The first phase of the deal will likely be concluded next Tuesday or Wednesday, said Hamas official Saleh Aruri. Other parties involved in the deal — Egyptian mediators and Israeli officials have not confirmed a day.
AP

But in a development that challenges a central pillar of the Syrian regime’s legitimacy, Palestinians in Syria are beginning to turn against a dictatorship that for decades used its claims of resisting Israel and fighting for Palestinian rights as justification for the repression of its own people.

“We will not accept to be a bargaining chip for the Syrian regime,” said Abu Ammar, 50, a Palestinian refugee living in Yarmouk, a poor southern suburb of Damascus and the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria.

“The regime wants to use us against the pro-democracy protesters but I think most Palestinian refugees in Yarmouk now moved from being neutral to being on the side of the Syrian protesters,” he said. Ammar is a former militant in Fatah, the dominant secular Palestinian party, and is now a car mechanic in Yarmouk.

The camp is home to some 150,000 registered Palestinians, as well as tens of thousands of Syrians.

As Syrian protesters demanding basic rights continue to be gunned down by President Bashar al-Assad’s security forces, Syria’s Palestinians are beginning to stand up like citizens themselves, protesting against the ruthless violence of Assad’s government.

“Palestinian refugees in Syria live among Syrians, not like in Lebanon. For six decades we have lived together and there are many mixed marriages and a new, mixed generation,” said a political activist from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP).

“When the protesters call on us to participate, it shows they consider us partners, not strangers. We have the same rights as Syrians, so we also have the same responsibilities.”

On July 1, in the first reported mass participation of Palestinians in the opposition since the uprising began in mid-March, more than 3,000 Palestinians from the refugee camp in the central city of Homs joined the pro-democracy protests.

More than simply a boost to the size of the protests that Friday, the participation of the Palestinians, for some long-time Syria watchers, represented a seismic shift.

“Dictators have used the Palestinians for the last 50 years to get legitimacy, saying to their people, ‘You have to tolerate all this violence, all this lack of freedom, all this brutality because we’re going to liberate Palestine.’ That’s a lie,” said Wissam Tarif, director of Insan, a Syrian human rights organization.

“My father bought it. And the fathers and grandfathers of the people protesting on the streets bought it too. But we don’t.”

Anger is growing among the half a million Palestinians living in Syria as details emerge of the regime’s role in pushing Palestinian protesters into a deadly confrontation with Israel last month, in what was widely condemned as a move to divert attention from its own brutal crackdown.

On June 5, the 44th anniversary of Israel’s occupation of Syria’s southern Golan Heights, the PFLP-GC, a faction long allied with the regime, helped organize hundreds of Palestinians from Yarmouk to travel to the Golan Heights.

The fertile plateau is one of Israel’s most stable borders, with barely a shot fired since the end of 1973’s Yom Kippur or October War.

The regime regularly justified its near half century application of emergency law, which suspended many basic rights outlined in the Constitution, by the fact that the Golan remains occupied.

When Palestinians attempted to cross the border fence, 20 were shot dead and some 270 others wounded by Israeli soldiers, the second such incident within a month, prompting global headlines. The shootings were all filmed live by state-run Syria TV.

Never before had the regime allowed Palestinians, Syrians or any Arabs to attempt to cross its border with Israel.

Indeed, Damascus has for decades pursued a policy of directing Arab resistance into neighboring Lebanon. In the 1970s, Syria played a role pushing Yasser Arafat’s Fatah fighters into South Lebanon, where they launched attacks on Israel from an area that came to be known as “Fatahland.”

During the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon beginning in 1982, Syria helped arm Hezbollah in its successful struggle to liberate South Lebanon, before assisting the Iranian-financed group to become the most powerful political and military force in Lebanon. The PFLP-GC, whose headquarters is in Damascus, maintains bases along the mountains of Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.

“All Palestinians know the PFLP-GC organized the trip to the Golan to help Syria,” said Nidal Mahmoud, 30, an accountant from Yarmouk.

“In the graveyard I saw the corpses of Palestinians who died for nothing, just to divert attention away from Syria’s crisis to the borders with Israel. The Palestinian groups do nothing useful for us; they work for Syria, Iran and other countries.”

When PFLP-GC leader Ahmed Jibril, a former captain in the Syrian army, attempted to make a speech lambasting Israel at the funerals in Yarmouk, enraged mourners threw stones at him, accusing Jibril of manipulating the Palestinian cause to serve the Assad regime.

Protesters then attacked the PFLP-GC’s headquarters in Yarmouk with stones, prompting guards to open fire, killing 11 young Palestinian men.

There is unconfirmed evidence that the carefully orchestrated move to allow Palestinian protesters to cross the border with Israel came from the highest ranks of the regime.

An allegedly leaked memo from the office of the Mayor of Quneitra, the closest Syrian town to the Golan border, describes how Assef Shawkat, President Assad’s brother-in-law, the former chief of military intelligence and the current deputy head of the armed forces, ordered a military intelligence captain to assist protestors to cross the fence.

“Permission is hereby granted allowing approaching crowds to cross the cease fire line toward the occupied Majdal-Shamms [Golan Heights], and to further allow them to engage physically with each other in front of United Nations agents and offices. Furthermore, there is no objection if a few shots are fired in the air,” the memo read.

The leaked document was supplied by Radwan Ziadeh, head of the Damascus Center for Human Rights and a visiting scholar at Harvard University. While it could not be independently verified, Ziadeh has been a consistently reliable source of information on the Syrian uprising.

The U.S. deputy ambassador to the U.N., Rosemary DiCarlo, said the protest in the Golan represented “a transparent ploy by the Syrian government to incite violence along the disengagement line in order to divert public attention from its own indiscriminate killings and abuses of the human rights of the Syrian people.”

That position was backed by similar robust statements from German and French U.N. ambassadors.

Despite the deaths in the Golan and Yarmouk, by no means all Palestinians have broken with the regime.

“Syria is the only country in the Arab world which deals with Palestinians as its citizens,” said a pro-Syrian Palestinian activist close to the PFLP-GC, who asked to be known only as Ibrahim.

“Syria has been supporting Palestinian groups for more than four decades and now is the time for these groups to reward Syria and stand with it in this big crisis.”

Ibrahim said the PFLP-GC and Fatah Intifada, a Syrian-backed radical offshoot of Fatah, would remain loyal to Assad. He criticized Hamas, the powerful Islamist group, for choosing to remain neutral in Syria. Hamas had apparently rejected demands by the regime, quoted in a report by the International Crisis Group, that it provide political and material support to crush the protests.

In an interview with France 24 on May 9, Khaled Meshaal, Hamas’ Damascus-based leader, described the Arab Spring as “beautiful” and said freedom and democracy are needed in Syria.

The regime has further deepened animosity among Palestinians by seeking, in the early days of the uprising, to directly blame Palestinians for inciting the instability.

On March 21, the private daily Al Watan, owned by Assad’s cousin Rami Makhlouf, said unrest in Daraa was the work of the defunct jihadist group Fatah al-Islam, which rose up in 2007 in a Palestinian camp in Lebanon.

On March 26, Bouthaina Shaaban, Assad’s political advisor, claimed Palestinians from the Al-Ramel refugee camp outside the port city of Lattakia had attacked stores in an effort to ignite a civil war.

Writing in the Beirut-based An-Nahar, which is regularly critical of the Syrian regime, Randa Haydar said the protests against the PFLP-GC in Yarmouk represented “a popular and spontaneous uprising against the Palestinian factions taking advantage of the refugees as well as the Syrian regime trading in the blood of Palestinians.”

A Syrian official, quoted in the International Crisis Group report, put it more bluntly: “The regime can no longer claim to be standing up for resistance.”

Hugh Macleod and Annasofie Flamand reported from Beirut, with reporters inside Syria.

GP

Fatah on Saturday nominated the current prime minister, Salam Fayyad, a political independent, as its candidate to head the new government, a move designed to maintain Western aid to the Palestinian Authority. Fayyad, a U.S.-educated economist, is respected by foreign donors and has been credited internationally with building government institutions necessary for Palestinian statehood.

The United States, Israel and the European Union have warned that they would have no dealings with a new Palestinian government backed by Hamas unless it renounces violence, recognizes Israel and accept previous Palestinian-Israeli accords.

Hamas has rejected those conditions, and on Sunday one of its leaders in Gaza said Fayyad was unfit to lead a new unity government. Under the Fatah-Hamas accord, which ended a four-year rift, the two factions agreed to form a government of unaffiliated technocrats whose chief task would be to prepare for parliamentary and presidential elections in a year.

“Salam Fayyad is unacceptable, because he has drowned the Palestinian people in billions of dollars of debt and made its economy dependent on foreign donors,” Salah Bardawil, a member of the Hamas political bureau, said by telephone from Gaza.

He accused Fayyad of cooperating with the United States and Israel in a crackdown on Hamas in the West Bank, jailing its members and shutting down institutions affiliated with the movement.

Fayyad’s name was not among four candidates, two from each side, considered in previous discussions between Fatah and Hamas, Bardawil said.

Mahmoud Zahar, another Hamas leader in Gaza, said by telephone that Fatah had presented Fayyad’s candidacy as an ultimatum, contrary to an agreement to reach a consensus. “This is a violation of the agreement,” he said. “We’re speaking about principles, not particular names.”

Zahar said he was “not accepting or rejecting” Fayyad, but that the decision on the future prime minister had to be hammered out by the factions.

Ghassan Khatib, the spokesman of the current government headed by Fayyad, declined to comment, citing the sensitivity of the subject.

Representatives of Hamas and Fatah are scheduled to meet Tuesday in Cairo to discuss cabinet appointments.

Photo: Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad R with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas

WP

“We want to see more stability, prosperity and a stronger government that responds to the people’s aspirations,” he told France 24 television.

” We want more freedom and democracy in order to serve the interests of the people and help strengthen the country against external aggression.” He added

Meshaal was speaking in Cairo after attending a ceremony hosted by Egypt that formally ended four years of strife between Hamas and its more secular Palestinian rival Fatah, an accord aimed at advancing the Palestinians’ goal of statehood in territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

He urged the United States and the European Union to support the reconciliation deal.

Meshaal also said the United States had no right to kill Osama bin Laden but said this did not mean the his Islamist group supported al Qaeda’s attacks on civilians.

Hamas carried out dozens of suicide bombings and is classified by the United States and the European Union as a terrorist group. Reuters

The comments published Thursday — similar to a message from Britain a day earlier — suggest Europe may be inching toward a watershed moment, joining those in favour of recognizing Palestine even if there is no peace deal with Israel.

However, German Chancellor Angela Merkel reiterated Thursday that she is opposed to any unilateral move.

“We (Germany) don’t think unilateral steps are further helpful,” she said after meeting Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Berlin.

Sarkozy’s comments were published shortly before his meeting with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is touring Europe to rally opposition against the Palestinians decision to form a unity government. Netanyahu says it is impossible to talk peace with a government that is set to include the Islamic militant group Hamas.

But so far, Netanyahu appears to be making limited progress. Western governments have called on Hamas to moderate its views, but are also urging Israel to make a new push for peace.

Speaking to the weekly newsmagazine L’Express, Sarkozy was quoted as saying if talks between Israel and the Palestinians don’t resume over the summer, France will help promote the international recognition of a Palestinian state.

“The idea that we have time is a dangerous idea, we must finish,” Sarkozy said.

Speaking briefly to reporters after leaving the Elysee Palace, Netanyahu was unconvinced.

“A serious quest for peace can only happen through negotiations” between Israel and the Palestinians, “not a U.N. dictat,” he said.

And he suggested he had no doubts about Hamas’ intentions.

“Hamas unfortunately remains committed to our destruction and remains committed to pursue the war of terror,” he told reporters. “In fact, what is being discussed (by the Palestinians) today is to create a Palestinian state in order to improve the positions from which Hamas wants to drive Israel to the sea.”

He said the idea of a state should be to end “the conflict as Israel and anybody interested in peace wants,” not “to continue the conflict as Hamas wants.”

If Palestinian national unity “is unity for peace then we would be the first to support it,” Netanyahu said “But if it’s unity to move away from peace and to pursue the battle for Israel’s eradication then obviously we oppose it and so should everyone else.”

Peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel broke down last September with the expiration of an Israeli settlement freeze in the West Bank. They say there can be no talks if Israel continues to build homes in the occupied territories.

With peace talks stalled for months, Palestinian officials say they will ask the United Nations to recognize their independence in September with or without an agreement with Israel.

Palestinians say their state should include the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with east Jerusalem as the capital. Israel captured all three areas in the 1967 Mideast war, although it withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Netanyahu has said the borders of a future Palestine must be negotiated.

Palestine is already recognized by dozens of countries but not by the United States or most European nations. France’s endorsement would be a major setback to Israel and could spark a trend.

In a key step for their U.N. campaign, Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah agreed Wednesday to form a unity government and end a four-year rift that has left them divided between rival leaderships in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Fatah, which dominates the West Bank government, favours a peace agreement with Israel, while the Iranian-backed Hamas government in Gaza opposes Israel’s existence.

World capitals have reacted warily but have not ruled out dealing with the new government. Instead, they are expressing hope that Hamas will assume a peaceful posture.

German officials have made it repeatedly clear over recent weeks that they would not support a unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood and Merkel said nothing had changed.

“We want a two-state solution,” she said Thursday. “We don’t think unilateral steps are further helpful.”

She said despite Sarkozy’s remarks, both Germany and France are pushing for the same thing — the resumption of negotiations.

“We believe we should concentrate on that, and I think France is also working in this direction,” she said.

Abbas said the unified Palestinians will promote peace, not hinder it.

“The signing of the reconciliation between the Palestinians will not have any influence on the peace process,” Abbas said. “Quite the opposite, it will support the process and strengthen the two-state solution.”

He said Palestinians are willing to accept the outlines of a peace agreement proposed by Britain, France and Germany.

That proposal calls for an immediate halt to settlement activity by the Israelis, a solution to the question of Palestinian refugees and agreement on the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of both countries and on borders before the 1967 Mideast war, with approved land swaps. It also calls for security arrangements that respect Palestinian sovereignty and protect Israel, and prevent a resurgence of terrorism.

“We have said that negotiations are the way for reaching a solution,” Abbas told reporters. “We explained again that we are willing to accept the three-party solution that Germany, France and the UK have given the Security Council as the basis … for the return to the negotiations.”

Sarkozy has long promoted a greater role for France and Europe in the peace process. He was expected to discuss a relaunching of the peace process in his talks with Netanyahu later Thursday. France “expects him to take the risk of peace,” Sarkozy said in the interview. AP

“We announce to Palestinians that we turn forever the black page of division,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah’s leader, said in his opening address.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a visit to London, “What happened today in Cairo is a tremendous blow to peace and a great victory for terrorism”.

Hamas, whose founding charter calls for Israel’s destruction, seized the Gaza Strip from Fatah forces in a brief Palestinian civil war in 2007. It has opposed Abbas’s quest for a negotiated peace with the Jewish state. In what appeared as a sign of lingering friction, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal did not share the podium with Abbas and the ceremony was delayed briefly over where he would sit.

Against expectations, neither signed the unity document.

Hamas leaders will meet Abbas next week, possibly in Cairo, to start work on implementing the accord, deputy Hamas leader Moussa Abu Marzouk said after the ceremony. In his speech to the gathering, Meshaal said Hamas sought a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, devoid of any Israeli settlers and without “giving up a single inch of land” or the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

Israel withdrew soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005. It has kept up settlement activity in the much larger West Bank.

Hamas has stated in the past that it would accept as an interim solution in the form of a state in all of the territory Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war, along with a long-term ceasefire. The unity deal calls for forming an interim government to run the West Bank, where Abbas is based, and the Gaza Strip, and prepare for long overdue parliamentary and presidential elections within a year.

In his speech, Abbas repeated his call for a halt to Jewish settlement construction as a condition for resuming peace talks with Israel that began in September, but fizzled within weeks after it refused to extend a limited building moratorium.

“The state of Palestine must be born this year,” he said.

Abbas is widely expected, in the absence of peace talks, to ask the UN General Assembly in September to recognise a Palestinian state in all of the West Bank and Gaza. Israel and the United States oppose such a unilateral move.

Diplomatic problems

Palestinians view reconciliation as an essential step toward presenting a common front at the United Nations and a reflection of a deep-seated public desire to end the internal schism amid popular revolts that have swept the Arab world.

But the deal presents potential diplomatic problems for Abbas’s aid-dependent Palestinian Authority.

Much of the West shuns Hamas over its refusal to recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept interim Israeli-Palestinian peace deals. The United States has reacted coolly to the reconciliation accord. A State Department spokesman, Mark Toner, said the United States would look at the formation of any new Palestinian government before taking steps on future aid.

The Cairo ceremony was greeted with celebrations in the Palestinian territories. But the public displays were less enthusiastic in the West Bank, where Abbas’s Fatah movement holds sway, and some doubted the deal was genuine.

“We have decided to pay any price so that reconciliation is achieved,” said Meshaal. “Our real fight is with the Israeli occupier, not Palestinian factions and sons of the one nation.” Meshaal later went to meet Abbas where he was staying in Cairo to discuss the deal, Palestinian sources said.

A spokesman for Abbas, Nabil Abu Rdainah, said the deal was signed on behalf of Fatah by Azzam al-Ahmad and for Hamas by Marzouk. It was not immediately clear why Meshaal and Abbas did not put their own signatures to the deal. “What we heard was that Abbas said he was the president of the Palestinian people of Fatah and of Hamas and not a leader of one faction only,” said the Palestinian source on the signing.

Egypt has set up a committee to oversee implementation of the accord. Reuters

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quoted as saying on Wednesday that the Palestinian Authority must choose whether it is interested in peace with Israel or reconciliation with Hamas.

In a statement released shortly after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement signed a reconciliation deal with Hamas movement, Netanyahu reiterated his recent remarks that peace with both Israel and Hamas was impossible.

“Hamas aspires to destroy the State of Israel and says so explicitly,” Netanyahu said in a statement.

Fatah and Hamas movements officials said on Wednesday that they have reached an initial agreement on ending a four-year-old rift that has left them divided between rival governments in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The officials said the plan calls for the formation of a single caretaker government in the coming days, and preparations to hold presidential and legislative elections a year from

The officials said the agreement was reached through Egyptian mediation. They spoke on condition of anonymity before a formal announcement in Cairo later Wednesday.