“The president will travel to Damascus Tuesday or Wednesday for talks with the general secretaries of Palestinian groups,” Qorei told AFP in Amman, where he has been taking part in meetings with Abbas of their mainstream Fatah faction.

The Fatah central committee, which was to wrap up its meetings later Saturday, was due to issue an appeal to all factions to join a national unity government “at this critical juncture which requires our people to unite in the face of the Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank.”

The premier first issued the appeal for militant factions to join a broad coalition on Tuesday.

The biggest Palestinian militant group Hamas said it was ready to work with the Palestinian leadership on the Israeli withdrawal, which is due to start next month, but declined to say whether it was ready to join the government.

“The idea of creating a national, all-encompassing entity to manage the withdrawal and supervise the legislative elections is, in principle, a good idea,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told AFP.

“We are in favour of the creation of an entity regrouping all the representatives of all the Palestinian forces but that does not have to be done through a government,” he said.

“The idea of communal action is good but there are differences over the way to do it.”

Hamas’s smaller rival Islamic Jihad ruled out joining a new cabinet.

“The Fatah central committee’s appeal for the creation of a national unity cabinet can be discussed by movements who want to participate in it,” Jihad official Khaled al-Batsh told AFP.

“We in Islamic Jihad will not participate in any way in such a government as long as the Israeli occupation continues.”

As well as the two Islamist factions, the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine also have exiled leaders in Damascus, as well as a raft of rejectionist groups whose main support base is in the diaspora.

Qorei said that alongide Abbas’s talks in the Syrian capital, he would be meeting with militant representatives inside the Palestinian territories.