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Fatah meets for talks on Israel, Hamas

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories — Senior members of Fatah, the party of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, met on Wednesday to discuss issues from peace talks with Israel to reconciliation with Hamas.

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The representatives from Fatah’s Revolutionary Council gathered in the West Bank city of Ramallah early on Wednesday for a day of talks on domestic and international political affairs.

During the day, Abbas was expected to deliver “a very important address on the developments in the political situation, the reconciliation process and the internal situation of the movement,” council member Hussein al-Sheikh told AFP. He said Fatah’s efforts to reconcile with Hamas would be discussed, and would show the Islamist group was to blame for the failure to reach a deal on a government of national unity.

The bitter divisions between Fatah and Hamas go back to the start of limited Palestinian self-rule in the 1990s, when Fatah strongmen cracked down on the Islamist militant group.

Their divisions boiled over in June 2007 when Hamas — which had won a parliamentary election a year earlier — drove Abbas’s loyalists from Gaza in a week of bloody clashes, seizing control of the impoverished territory.

All attempts at reconciliation, most of them mediated by Egypt, have failed, with Fatah and Hamas accusing each other of undermining trust by persecuting political rivals in the territory under its control.

The last round took place in Damascus earlier this month, but ended without agreement, and the two sides said they would meet again after Eid al-Adha, which ended on Friday.