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Fatah Members Escape From Gaza for Conference

Ten Fatah members bypassed Hamas checkpoints in Gaza this week and fled undercover to the West Bank to attend a key Fatah conference in Bethlehem.

[Gaza] A group of Fatah officials have managed to circumvent Hamas checkpoints in Gaza and escape to Ramallah after being smuggled passed the roadblocks on horse-drawn carts.

The ten officials were members of Fatah’s Central Committee and included a woman, sources close to Fatah told The Media Line.

They arrived in Ramallah on Tuesday in order to participate in the Sixth Fatah Conference, which begins in Bethlehem on August 4.

“They were wearing Bedouin clothing and sitting on carts,” the sources said. “Some Bedouin from the northern Gaza Strip helped them.”

Hamas has been preventing Fatah members from traveling to the West Bank by blocking their passage to Erez, the Israeli crossing-point in the northern part of the strip which separates Gaza from Israel.

Once at Erez, they are allowed to enter Israel if they have the right permits.

An Israeli army spokesman said he had no knowledge of the Fatah group that passed through Erez on Tuesday. Israeli government officials confirmed that several requests from Gaza-based Fatah members to attend the Bethlehem conference had indeed been approved, but they could not verify their number.

Palestinian sources said the Fatah members had to depart from Gaza undercover because Hamas was stopping Fatah members heading towards the Israeli checkpoint.

In some cases their identification cards and passports have confiscated and some Fatah members have been jailed.

‘Abdallah ‘Abdallah, a Ramallah-based Fatah member and head of the political committee in the Palestinian Legislative Council, said the group that fled this week was the tip of the iceberg.

He told The Media Line of a “three digit number” of Fatah members in Gaza who were planning to attend the conference.

“There are people who are interested in coming despite all the obstacles,” he said. “They will find a way of arriving from Gaza into the West Bank.”

Fatah members attending the conference are likely to face persecution by Hamas upon returning to the Gaza Strip, ‘Abdallah said, “but Hamas has been persecuting our people for so many months that they don’t care. They see that it’s more important for them to attend the conference, even if they will pay a high price.”

“If Hamas insists on preventing them, the reaction will be in kind, if not more forceful,” ‘Abdallah said.

Senior Hamas leader Mahmoud A-Zahhar said the movement had decided not to allow members of Fatah’s Central Committee to participate in the Fatah conference “as long as Hamas members and leaders are in Ramallah’s government jails.”

“If they want to have the right to travel and join their central meeting, they ought to release all the detainees. No one should be left in jails”, he said. “We don’t want to obstruct their meeting because we know its results in advance.”

West Bank Fatah Leader Fahmi A-Za’arir told Palestinian media that “Hamas is banning Fatah members from participating in their conference, but if Hamas will continue the ban, Hamas won’t be able to understand our reaction to solve this issue.”

Sources close to Hamas and Fatah confirmed to The Media Line that Hamas and Fatah would reach an agreement, supervised by Egypt, allowing Fatah members to travel to the West Bank in exchange for Egypt opening the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip for a week.

Egypt agreed to open the Rafah border from August 3 to August 8, but Hamas has yet to comply with its part of the agreement.

Adnan A-Domairi, a spokesman at the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Interior, said Hamas was trying to implement “cheap political blackmailing.”

“If Hamas is connecting its prisoner issue to Fatah members participating … it is clear blackmail,” A-Domairi said.

“The blackmailing will cost Hamas a lot, especially in the Palestinian reconciliation dialogue,” he added.

Hamas is demanding the release of its prisoners arrested by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. It also wants the interior ministry in Ramallah to send blank passports to the Hamas administration in Gaza so they can issue passports for Gazan residents.

‘Abdallah said the Palestinian Authority government in Ramallah was willing to secure a prisoner release and had intervened with the security forces holding Hamas prisoners in the West Bank.

Under an agreement reached on Wednesday, Hamas agreed to allow 400 Fatah members to travel from Gaza to the West Bank, if 200 of its prisoners were released from West Bank jails, Palestinian sources told The Media Line.

However, ‘Abdallah said Hamas’s new demands for passports were impossible to comply with.

“They’re asking for new blank passports to be sent to them with the minister’s signature, and that will never happen,” he said.

“We have some idea how they can use these passports,” ‘Abdallah said. “We cannot institutionalize the separation in Gaza.”

The general congress of Fatah, the largest Palestinian political party, will meet in Bethlehem on August 4. More than 1,500 delegates will attend from across the Arab world.

They will be discussing the future of the movement that shaped Palestinian history, and will elect a new leadership. 

Fatah is the largest party within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and arguably the most influential political movement to determine the fate of the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for more than 40 years.

Tuesday’s conference will be the first to take place in 20 years, and the first since Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat died in 2004. The conference is regarded as a key test of Fatah’s ability to recapture popular support among Palestinian voters by revamping its leadership and electing fresh faces to its central committee, three of whom are dead and the rest of whose members are aged 65 or over.

It will also be the first such conference to take place since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in a violent coup in June 2007.

Fatah and Hamas are currently embroiled in a standoff, where each accuses the other of arresting its members, plotting to assassinate leaders and planning to undermine its leadership. The ongoing talks in Cairo, with Egyptian mediation, are an attempt to iron out their problems but so far the hostility continues.