Special report: Internal situation in Palestine

    RAMALLAH, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Saleh Zidan, a senior member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) who participated in the ongoing national dialogue, denied on Thursday the reports saying that the dialogue have come to a dead-end.

    Zidan's remarks dismissed the reports which said that the fifth session of the dialogue had ended at Thursday dawn without achieving progress.

    Zidan said that the conferees agreed on resuming talks next Saturday after the informal talks scheduled on Thursday and Friday,leaving the door open for more talks to bridge gaps over the differences.

    Meanwhile, chief of Fatah parliamentary bloc Azzam al-Ahmad announced that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would travel to Gaza on Friday in an effort to push the dialogue forward.

    "It seems the factions didn't reach a deal, so President Abbas will go to Gaza to smooth out obstacles," al-Ahmad told local radio Voice of Palestine.

    On May 25, Abbas opened a national dialogue by giving Palestinian factions ten days until June 5 to accept the Prisoners' Document of National Accordance or he would put the proposal to a referendum within 40 days.

    The prisoners' document calls for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the territories that were occupied by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, which contradicts the ruling Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas)' charter calling for destruction of Israel.

    Abbas, thus, issued a presidential decree on June 10 to hold a referendum on the document on July 26.

    Following Abbas' referendum call, Hamas claimed that 15 points of the 18 points listed in the prisoners' proposal had been accepted by the group, but the remained three points were known as most controversial and hard to agreed. Enditem