Hamas rejects disarmament talk ahead of reconciliation deadline

Khalil al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official, speaks during a press conference in Gaza City, Monday, Nov. 27, 2017. The Islamist group Hamas is vowing to expand its militant activities in the West Bank in response to demands for its disarmament in Gaza. (AP)

GAZA CITY: The deputy head of Hamas’ political bureau in Gaza, Khalil Al-Hayya, said on Monday that the “weapons of the resistance” and payment for public servants it hired to run Gaza are red lines that cannot be crossed.
This was in response to demands by Fatah — the Palestinian nationalist party with which Hamas recently reached a tentative unity agreement after a decade-long feud — that Hamas disarm.
Another major sticking point between Hamas and Fatah is resolving payments for the nearly 40,000 public servants that Hamas hired in government and security institutions in the Gaza Strip after the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority asked its employees not to go to work there, except in the education and health sectors, but continued to pay their salaries for 11 years.
Al-Hayya told a news conference in Gaza City that payments for people who were employed in the government after Hamas took over control of Gaza in 2007 are “a red line that we cannot accept to bypass in any way,” adding that the employees were “not a faction that belongs to Hamas.”
“These are legal rights holders,” he said. “No one can bypass them, and we will stand with them with all we have.”
Regarding Fatah’s request for Hamas to neutralize its arms, Al-Hayya said: “The weapons of the resistance cannot be divided or talked about in any way. These weapons will not be touched and will move to the West Bank to fight the occupation.
“It is our right to resist the occupation until it ends, either to liberate Palestine or to live with it, and we will liberate Palestine, God willing.”
Al-Hayya said that decisions about “peace and war” should be taken by “a unified Palestinian leadership,” and that that would require the reconstruction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
The initial optimism surrounding the most recent reconciliation agreement between Hamas and Fatah appears to be fading. Last month, Hamas transferred control of Gaza’s border crossings with Israel and Egypt to the PA, and it was expected to take further steps to extend PA control over Gaza on Dec. 1, but disagreements between the two parties have intensified in recent days.
Al-Hayya stressed that Hamas went into reconciliation negotiations with Fatah “with power and unity of position” and would not allow its arm to be twisted.
“We in Hamas continue to choose reconciliation, and we will not allow (Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas) or anyone else to flee from it,” he said, calling on Egypt to “stop hands that do not want reconciliation.”
A delegation from Egyptian General Intelligence arrived in Gaza on Monday to follow up the implementation of the reconciliation agreement.
A Hamas-Fatah meeting held in Cairo last week ended with a statement about the reconciliation agreement without putting in place practical mechanisms to implement it.
The next meeting between Hamas and Fatah is set for Dec. 1, as stipulated in the latest Cairo agreement.
“I am not optimistic. The issue of government empowerment is loose and there are no criteria on which to base the results,” Mukhaimar Abu Saada, a professor of political science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, told Arab News.
“It seems clear that repeated talk about the empowerment of the government is to evade the reconciliation,” he continued, “especially as the region is not ready for internal Palestinian reconciliation.”