GAZA CITY, 12 January 2007 — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said yesterday that he won’t allow fighting between Fatah and Hamas to continue and called on opposing factions to respect each other while addressing a large rally of his Fatah movement.
Thousands of Fatah supporters waved the movement’s yellow flags and chanted slogans against the Hamas group. Several Fatah activists briefly carried Abbas on their shoulders. “Go, go, until liberation,” they chanted. Others fired in the air.
The rally in the West Bank city of Ramallah was organized as a show of Fatah’s strength against Hamas — which is powerful in the Gaza Strip — but Abbas aides said the moderate Palestinian leader would also give coalition talks with Hamas another chance. Negotiations on bringing Fatah into the Hamas-led Cabinet are to resume soon and continue for two weeks, said Rafiq Husseini, a senior Abbas aide. If the talks fail, he said, Abbas would proceed with his plan to call early elections.
In his speech, Abbas did not make clear whether he was still determined to go ahead with early elections to resolve the problem of the divided Palestinian government and made no reference to a resumption of coalition talks.
Without mentioning Hamas by name, he said the response to his election call last month was violence, and said those opposed to new polls should challenge the decision in the courts, not in the streets.
— With input from agencies
