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Palestinian sources reveal terms of Fatah-Hamas unity agreement

Various Palestinian sources announced “implied” terms of the unity pact that go far beyond the actual items outlined in the released agreement.

After the announcement last week that Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party and the Hamas terrorist organization had reached a preliminary agreement to jointly rule over Palestinian communities in Judea and Samaria and Gaza, the terms of the pact are coming to light.

The rival factions, who have waged bloody campaigns against each other over the past decade, met in Cairo and drafted a set of principles they claim will guide talks moving forward.

Notably, neither the terms of the preliminary agreement nor statements to the press by named and unnamed Palestinian sources indicated that the agreement would include a recognition of the State of Israel or Hamas’ disarmament, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded prior to the Cairo meeting last week.

Among the primary points of the six-item agreement are Hamas’ plans to cede control of the management of various crossings to Palestinian Authority staff and the coordination of “security services with the relevant parties.”

While Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas also maintained in the run-up to last week’s talks that Hamas must completely disarm as a precondition to reconciliation, nothing in the actual terms of the initial agreement demonstrates that Hamas has ceded to that demand.

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Palestinian sources said that Hamas has agreed to stop mounting terror attacks against Israelis in Judea and Samaria, but English translations of the agreement itself do not reflect such pledges.

The Egyptians, who served as facilitators for the talks in Cairo, issued a press release following the signing of the agreement stating that the Palestinian reconciliation process is guided by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi’s desire “to achieve an independent Palestinian state on the borders of June 4, 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital and a return for Palestinian refugees.”

By: World Israel News Staff