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Hamas Demands to Keep Guns as Part of Gaza Handover to Abbas

Palestinian Authority Pressing for Full Gaza Rule, Premier Says

(Bloomberg) -- Hamas leaders rejected demands to surrender the group’s weapons after it handed over most governing control in the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority, raising the prospect that unity efforts may fail again.

While the authority’s cabinet held a festive meeting in Gaza and Egyptian President Abdel-Fatah El-Sisi hailed the effort at Palestinian reconciliation as a harbinger of Middle East peace, the disarmament dispute showed how bumpy the road ahead may be. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned against any “bogus” unity bid that would threaten his country if Hamas is allowed to keep its guns. The Trump administration has stressed the importance of committing to nonviolence.

Ismail Haniyeh, one of Hamas’s two top chiefs, told its television station in Gaza that “as long as there is an occupation” of Palestinian territory by Israel, “then it is our people’s right to have their weapons” and resist. “There are two arms: the arm of the police and the government, and the arm of resistance,” he said.

Convening the cabinet was the first step in efforts to reunite the Fatah-ruled West Bank with Gaza since the militant Islamic Hamas movement seized control of the seaside territory in 2007. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has tried numerous times without success to repair the rift, in part to counter Israeli assertions that peace negotiations are pointless because he can’t ensure that any treaty will also hold in Gaza.

Full Control

Hamas, which is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S., European Union and Israel, agreed to cede control of Gaza as funds from abroad dried up and Abbas imposed sanctions that reduced government salaries and cut electricity to three hours a day. The moves deepened the hardships facing the strip, which has been battered by an Israeli and Egyptian blockade and destructive wars with Israel.

The government is “ready to take complete responsibility and extend its full control over Gaza, without exceptions,” Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah said at the cabinet meeting. The cabinet members later went to the offices of each of their ministries to formally assume control from Hamas.

Leaders of Abbas’ Fatah party will meet with Hamas negotiators in Cairo next week to discuss security and other controversial matters that were deferred so the handover process could start, Civil Affairs Minister Hussein al-Sheikh said.

“The whole world is watching the efforts at achieving reconciliation between the leaders of the Palestinian people,” El-Sisi said in a recorded speech played during a meeting between his intelligence chief, Khaled Fawzi, and Hamdallah. “There is an opportunity for achieving peace in the region.”

Security Showdown

El-Sisi sponsored the negotiations in part because he wants Hamas’s cooperation in deterring attacks on Egyptian soldiers in the northern Sinai peninsula bordering Gaza. Mohammed Dahlan, the former Palestinian security chief in Gaza and an Abbas rival, helped broker the deal with the other top Hamas chief, Yahya Sinwar, who grew up in the same refugee camp as Dahlan.

Gaza, which sits on the Mediterranean coast and is fenced in by heavily-patrolled barriers on three sides bordering Israel and Egypt, has been a frequent battleground over the past decade, during which Hamas has fought three wars with Israel and thousands of Gazans have been killed. Palestinian militants have fired some 11,000 rockets into the Jewish state since Israel removed its soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005. Close to 100 Israelis have been killed and thousands injured.

The Palestinian cabinet’s initial work will focus on providing more electricity and water for Gaza’s 1.9 million residents and funding construction projects, spokesman Yousef al-Mahmoud said at a press conference.

Israel in the past has opposed any role in Palestinian government for Hamas, which achieved international notoriety in the 1990s by launching suicide bomb attacks in the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Netanyahu said that Palestinians must disband the Hamas military arm and sever the connection with Iran, which calls for the destruction of Israel, speaking in Maale Adumim, a West Bank settlement where the prime minister said thousands of new apartments will be built.

“We are not prepared to accept bogus reconciliations in which the Palestinian side apparently reconciles at the expense of our existence,” Netanyahu said. “We expect everyone who talks about a peace process to recognize the State of Israel.”

--With assistance from Tarek El-Tablawy

To contact the reporters on this story: Saud Abu Ramadan in Gaza City at sramadan@bloomberg.net, Fadwa Hodali in Ramallah at fhodali@bloomberg.net, Jonathan Ferziger in Tel Aviv at jferziger@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alaa Shahine at asalha@bloomberg.net, Mark Williams, Michael S. Arnold