Egypt postponed hosting a new round of Palestinian reconciliation talks set to take place on Tuesday, officials from the rival Hamas and Fatah factions said. Mahmoud Al-Aloul, a member of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah Central Committee, said Cairo delayed the talks with the Islamist group Hamas because it did not think unity could be achieved.
The factions have traded accusations over political detainees. They disagree over holding elections scheduled in the Palestinian territories for next January and, fundamentally, Hamas opposes Abbas's peace negotiations with Israel. Peace talks have been suspended since Israel's three-week military offensive against Hamas in January in the Gaza Strip, which the armed Islamists have controlled since 2007, when Hamas drove out forces of the secular Fatah movement.
Abbas then dismissed a Hamas-led unity government and formed his own administration in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Egyptian mediators have shuttled between Fatah leaders in Ramallah and Hamas's Damascus-based leadership trying to narrow the gaps.
The groups have already held numerous rounds of unity talks in Cairo and missed several Egyptian-set deadlines. "They decided to delay the dialogue and continue the contacts and shuttling between Ramallah and Damascus to hammer out the obstacles," Al-Aloul said, adding talks would not resume before the end of September.
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