Special Report:
Internal situation in
Palestine
GAZA, June 27 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian factions,
except the Islamic Jihad, have agreed on a statehood initiative that implicitly
recognizes Israel's right to exist, official sources said Tuesday.
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| Palestinian faction leaders take part in a press conference in Gaza City June 27. (Xinhua/AFP Photo) |
The sources said President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime
Minister Ismail Haniyeh have reached the agreement on a political document,
penned by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, implicitly recognizes Israel.
The agreement came after factions meeting in Gaza, a
senior aide to Abbas said, adding "all the obstacles were removed and an
agreement was reached on all the points of the prisoners' document."
A spokesman of the ruling Islamic Resistance Movement
(Hamas) confirmed the agreement, saying the two sides would formally announce
the deal later in the day.
Khader Habib, an Islamic Jihad leader in Gaza also
told reporters that the national and Islamic factions, including the ruling
Hamas, Fatah and other parties agreed on the document. However, Habib said that
his movement still has its own reservation on certain clauses that came in the
document that includes eighteen clauses that decides the future of the
Palestinian cause.
Meanwhile, Salleh Zeidan, a senior Democratic Front
for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) leader, expected that both Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Haniyeh, also a senior Hamas leader,
would convene later Tuesday. He told reporters that an agreement on the document
would be signed by all the factions that participated in the national dialogue
and would be sponsored by both President Abbas and Prime Minister Haneya.
The Palestinian National Dialogue Committee convened
in Gaza on Tuesday to finalize the agreement, said Zeidan, adding that both
Abbas and Haneya would be signing on it.
Signing the agreement on the prisoners' document
would widely open the door for forming a national collation government instead
of the Hamas-led one, said Zeidan.
The document of national accordance issued by the
prisoners in Israeli jails called on establishing a Palestinian state on the
Palestinian territories occupied by Israeli in 1967, side-by-side with the state
of Israel.
It also called on keeping what they termed the armed
struggle against Israel into the occupied Palestinian territories, but to
enlarge this armed struggle into Israel if it is needed to. The prisoners'
document had also called for resolving the Palestinian cause peacefully,
according to the Arab peace initiative made in Beirut in 2002, and according to
the international resolutions.
When the national dialogue started on May 25,
President Abbas had warned that if the factions fail to agree on the document,
he would call for a popular referendum.
Abbas had later issued a decree saying that a
referendum would be decided on July 26, but also gave another chance to
conferees to finalize the agreement.
Palestinian observers said that the timing of
declaring an agreement on the document of the prisoners is an attempt to get the
Palestinians out of the current political, security and economical crisis.
On Sunday, Hamas armed wing led an armed attack
together with another two minor armed wings, into an Israeli military base near
the crossing point of Kerem Shalom, southeast of the Gaza Strip. Two Israeli
soldiers and two Palestinian gunmen were killed in the attack, but militants
managed to abduct an Israeli soldier, and now they are calling for exchanging
the soldier with Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
Ahmed Kahloot, a Palestinian political analyst from
Gaza, said he hope that reaching an agreement among all factions would help in
convincing the militants who abducted the Israeli soldiers to set him free and
end a crisis that threats the entire Palestinian cause.
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