Hamas officials find long-term agreement with Israel unlikely
The application of a final agreement would require the consent of all Palestinian factions at play.
By JPOST.COM STAFFDeputy chairman of Hamas’s political bureau Musa Abu Marzouk talks during an interview in Cairo on August 9.(photo credit: REUTERS)
Hamas officials both inside and outside of the Gaza Strip have expressed mixed views concerning the likelihood that a long-term agreement with Israel, entailing a five year cease-fire, could be reached.According to Israel Radio, Osama Hamdan, a member of Hamas based in Lebanon, had explain that while the Islamist organizations found some of the ideas included in the agreement outline to be acceptable, they were not ready to be implemented.Another Hamas representative, Salah al-Bardawil, further explained that both sides, Hamas and Israel, have not yet formulated final positions and that the application of a final agreement would require the consent of all Palestinian factions at play.Senior Hamas officials, among them Hamas deputy leader Mussa Abu Marzouk, had already arrived in Qatar on Saturday to flesh out an agreement.Reportedly, one of the the key features of an agreement would be the agreement of a creation of a detached, floating port in Gaza.Hamas has been struggling in its attempts to stamp out the activities of dissident groups in the Gaza Strip. A radical jihadi-Salafi group calling itself the Omar Hadid Brigades is the latest group to emerge from the worsening conditions in the Strip. Identifying itself as a off-shoot of the Islamic State, the group has been responsible for a scattered rocket fire into Israel and seeks to challenge Hamas supremacy in the coastal Palestinian enclave.While Hamas sources were willing to confirm the veracity of the indirect negotiations, an Israeli source also added that the recent easing of restrictions by Egypt on the Rafah crossing, is also a result of these talks.The opening of the Rafah crossing and the two-day extension granted by Egypt is generally seen as an attempt by Cairo to alleviate pressure on Hamas and give it a position of authority to strengthen the drive towards re-establishing lines of communications between it and Israel.
