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

It was the first claim of harassment by a group of Shiite worshippers against the territory’s mainstream rulers, who are Sunni Muslims. Hamas officials, who have close ties with Shiite Iran, denied the allegations.

A man who described himself as a Shiite said police burst into a house where followers were marking Arbaeen, commemorating the end of 40 days of mourning following the anniversary of the death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. The man said about 15 worshippers were beaten and detained.

He declined to be identified, fearing further harassment. But some of the men filed complaints to the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights and the rights group Mezan, which both sharply condemned Hamas over the attack.

Mezan said in a statement that during Saturday evening’s incident in the town of Beit Lahia, police smashed up the apartment, broke the bones of seven of the men, detained some of them at a police station and beat them again before sending them to a military hospital for treatment.

“The attack is a violation of the freedom … to practice one’s faith,” said Mezan official Samir Zakout.

Interior Ministry spokesman Ihab Ghussein said Tuesday that police stormed the apartment of a group of “outlaws” who were planning “criminal acts.” He said he was unaware of the presence of any Shiites in Gaza. He said his offices would look into right groups’ allegations that the men were beaten.

There are no official statistics on the number of Gaza’s Shiites. They are believed to number several dozen — a minuscule minority among a population of 1.6 million people who are overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, including the territory’s Islamist militant Hamas rulers.

In many parts of the Middle East, Shiites and Sunnis have had strained relations due to deep theological differences that date back centuries. These differences have boiled over into violence over the years in places like Iraq and Pakistan.

Despite such strains, the attack in Gaza seemed surprising, given Hamas’ traditionally warm ties with Iran. The fundamentalist Shiite government in Iran has given hundreds of millions of dollars, as well as military training and other backing, to Hamas.

In a separate incident, Mezan said Tuesday that a prominent rights activist who has criticized Palestinian leaders and militants was stabbed and slightly wounded by unknown assailants.

The attack on Mahmoud Abu Rahma last Friday came after he published an essay that criticized Palestinian leaders and militant groups for threatening, silencing and even harming critics.

“It is safe to assume that neither the government nor the resistance is willing to step in to protect people who dare to criticize them,” he wrote.

Zakout said soon after the essay was published, Abu Rahma received threats by e-mail and text message. Hamas police condemned the attack and said they were searching for the assailants.

ABC/ AP

Hamas, a militant Islamist Palestinian group, rules the Gaza Strip.

The officials, speaking from Damascus, said Tuesday that the evacuations are in response to the deteriorating security situation in Syria, where President Bashar Assad has been resisting a 10-month uprising.

The officials say the families of three top officials — Moussa Abu Marzouk, Mohammed Naser and Izzat Risheq — are set to leave at the end of the month, while the three men will remain in Damascus.

In recent months, Hamas has pulled lower level officials and their families out of Syria.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing the inner workings of the secretive group.

CBS

The Univision documentary, “La Amenaza Irani,” (Iranian Threat), uses undercover, never-before-seen video footage to illustrate how Iran’s growing political, economic and military ties to Latin America threaten U.S. security. The videos were part of a seven-month investigation in which college-aged Mexicans infiltrated diplomatic circles in Mexico to obtain recordings that prove diplomats from Iran, Venezuela and Cuba planned a cybernetic attack against the White House, FBI, Pentagon and U.S. nuclear plants.

The documentary also features secret video taken by extremists linked to Iran and footage from an undercover journalist who infiltrated Venezuelan military camps where terrorists trained. The news network’s investigative team also tracked the expansion of Iranian interests in the hemisphere, including money-laundering and drug-trafficking activities by terrorist groups supported by Iran.

A segment is dedicated to the connection between Mexican drug cartels and the foiled plot to murder the Saudi ambassador in Washington D.C. a few months ago. One of the Iranians charged had been ordered by that country’s Special Forces to travel to Mexico to recruit members of the notorious drug cartel “Los Zetas” to carry out the plot. The massive scheme against U.S. government information and computer systems had been in the works years earlier, the documentary reveals.

The ties between Middle Eastern terrorists and Latin America are nothing new, though specific plots against the U.S. from the region have likely not been exposed in this manner. Since 1982 Cuba has appeared on the State Department’s list of countries that have repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism, which means restrictions on U.S. foreign assistance, a ban on defense exports and sales and other financial restrictions.

Earlier this year the Congressional Research Service (CRS), which examines issues for federal lawmakers, published a report on Latin American terrorist concerns to the United States. It points out that, while Latin America has not been the focal point of the U.S. war on terrorism, the region has struggled with domestic terrorism for decades and international terrorist groups have used it as a battle ground to advance their causes.

The report specifically mentions Iran’s increasing activities in Latin America in its attempt to circumvent U.S. sanctions as well as its ties to the radical Lebanon-based Islamic group Hezbollah. In fact, the CRS report quotes a separate State Department antiterrorism document that says the U.S. remains concerned that sympathizers of Hezbollah and the Sunni Muslim Palestinian group Hamas are raising money among the sizable Middle Eastern communities in the tri-border area of Argentina.

Judicialwatch

Officially, Hamas leaders are sticking to their denial they plan to quit the Syrian capital, where the group keeps its main headquarters outside the Gaza Strip.

But diplomats and regional sources said the Hamas delegation in Damascus, which once numbered hundreds of Palestinian officials and their relatives, had shrunk to a few dozen.

Departures were speeded up, one regional intelligence source said, by the Arab League’s suspension of Syria last month over its military crackdown on protests rocking the Assad government.

Diplomats said dozens of Hamas operatives and their families, who had lived in Syria since the 1990s, and others who moved there in recent years have returned to Gaza via Egypt in recent weeks.

Hamas would keep a skeletal presence in Syria to “book a seat in a post-Assad era”,” one diplomat said.

“Meanwhile, Hamas officials are on planes most of the time, bolstering ties with other countries like Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, Sudan, or in contact to explore new bases and not a sole base,” the diplomat added.

Asking not to be identified, the diplomat said: “Hamas will pull out of Syria in the right time but not for good.”

TENSIONS

When asked about Hamas’s presence in Damascus, Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman said: “There is no change.”

In Beirut on Friday, a Hamas representative said the group was “still committed to supporting Assad”.

But, one intelligence source said, although Hamas “owes Syria a lot for its support, it doesn’t want to be on the wrong side of pan-Arab public opinion”.

Angering Syria, Hamas has refused to hold rallies in Palestinian refugee camps in support of the Assad government, which has sunk deeper into international isolation.

Tensions with Damascus rose further when Hamas opted not to sign a statement by nine other Palestinian groups, including President Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestine Liberation Organization, in support of the Syrian leader.

Hamas, which Israel and many Western powers consider a terrorist group, won a 2006 Palestinian election and, a year later, seized the Gaza Strip following a schism with its secular rival, Fatah.

Reuters

Addressing a parade of about 50 thousand revolutionaries in the southwestern city of Bushehr on Sunday, Vahidi warned that it will sink the US warships :

” If the enemy attacks Iran, it must be ready to answer some questions such as how long it can fight against the Islamic Republic and how much it is ready to watch the sinking of its warships and ships.”

150, 000 missiles?
Commenting on Israeli threats to attack the Iranian nuclear facilities , Vahidi warned:“Why does the Zionist regime issue such threats? For how many missiles has it readied itself: 10 thousands, 20 thousands, 50 thousands, 100 thousands, 150 thousands, or more?”

He added, “The Zionist regime has not yet paid the price” for the massacres it committed in Sabra and Shatila and the Gaza Strip, and, if this regime attacks Iran, the Islamic Republic will take revenge for those crimes.

He did not say whether the 150, 000 missiles will be fired from Iran or by Hezbollah in Lebanon or Hamas in Gaza.

Last Thursday the military adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei , General Yahya Rahim Safavi warned Israel that should it attack Iran’s nuclear sites the Islamic Republic will rely on its allies Hezbollah and Hamas to do the fighting.

“There will be no need for Iran to launch ballistic missiles at Israel, because all the Zionist cities are within the range of our ally Hezbollah’s Katyusha (rockets),” he said.

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 meeting, which is expected to take place in Cairo, will include discussion of the reconciliation agreement that rival factions Fatah and Hamas signed in May, which was supposed to set the ground for reuniting the West Bank and Gaza Strip under one leadership.

Talks would also include the formation of a government of technocrats to prepare for presidential and legislative elections, which could take place in May, Abbas said at a memorial event in Ramallah in honor of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Hamas pushed Palestinian Authority forces out of the Gaza Strip in June 2007. The authority controls the West Bank, while Hamas controls the Gaza Strip.

Abbas had wanted his current prime minister, Salam Fayyad, who has strong Western backing, to run the new government, but Hamas strongly objected.

“We will exert every effort possible to end the division, which has hurt our people and our cause,” Abbas said. “The people want an end to occupation. The people want an end to division.”

Reconciliation with Hamas could be costly to the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority because of U.S., European and Israeli opposition to the group. The U.S. is among the countries that consider Hamas a terrorist organization. The Islamic militant group refuses to recognize Israel or renounce violence.

Abbas stressed that the U.S. and President Obama remain friends of the Palestinian people in spite of their strong support for Israel.

“The U.S. helps us financially and it provides us with considerable amount of aid,” he said. “Therefore, it is considered our friend.”

Abbas called on the U.S. to play a balanced role in resolving the decades-old Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He said he expects to discuss the future of the Palestinians’ political course with Meshaal.

“We will have to answer the question: Where are we going?” he said.

LAT

At the moment, the countries that will accept prisoners are Turkey, Qatar and Syria,” a Hamas official in Gaza told AFP on condition of anonymity on Monday. “These countries, along with Egypt and Hamas will coordinate on the procedures under which the prisoners will be moved,” the official added.

Israel is due to release 1,027 prisoners in two stages in exchange for the freedom of captured solider Gilad Shalit, who was snatched by Gaza militants in June 2006.

The first stage of the exchange will occur on Tuesday, when Israel is to free 477 prisoners in exchange for Shalit’s return, with a second group of 550 Palestinians to be freed within two months.

Of the first group, 40 are expected to be exiled overseas, including 26 from the West Bank, 13 from east Jerusalem and one from Gaza. Others released in the first stage will either return to their homes in the West Bank, Gaza, east Jerusalem and Israel, or they will be exiled to the Gaza Strip.

Ahramonline