One eve of Gaza reconciliation, Hamas frees Fatah men

Hamas freed five prisoners belonging to the rival Fatah party on Sunday and Egypt sent a delegation to the Gaza Strip to oversee the Islamist group’s planned handover of administrative control of the Palestinian enclave to a unity government.The West Bank-based Palestinian prime minister, Rami al-Hamdallah, and other officials of the government formed in 2014 are due in Gaza on Monday to run ministries and hold a cabinet meeting the next day.Hamas opted for reconciliation with Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah because it is short of funds and friends a decade after seizing the enclave in a brief civil war. “We are determined to … bury the chapter of division so that the homeland can be reunited,” Hamdallah said in public remarks in the West Bank city of Ramallah.One cabinet member, Culture Minister Ehab Bseisso, arrived in Gaza on Sunday and held a meeting with deputies and employees after taking up his post.

 

Source: One eve of Gaza reconciliation, Hamas frees Fatah men