RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says that unless he gets full control over the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, including the group’s weapons, he will “not be responsible for what goes on” there.

Abbas’ comments late Sunday dealt another blow to months of U.S.-backed Egyptian efforts to negotiate a deal that would sideline the Islamic militant Hamas and enable Abbas’ self-rule government to return to Gaza.

Hamas seized Gaza from forces loyal to Abbas in 2007.

Recent talks between Abbas and his rivals failed, mainly because Hamas refuses to disarm. This comes as tensions are rising on the Gaza-Israel border, with Hamas leading mass protests to try to break an Israeli-Egyptian border blockade.

Abbas told leaders of his Fatah movement he has informed Egypt of his demands and is waiting to hear back. </s> Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says that unless he gets full control over the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, including the group’s weapons, he will “not be responsible for what goes on” there.

Abbas’ comments late Sunday dealt another blow to months of U.S.-backed Egyptian efforts to negotiate a deal that would sideline the Islamic militant Hamas and enable Abbas’ self-rule government to return to Gaza.

Hamas seized Gaza from forces loyal to Abbas in 2007.

Recent talks between Abbas and his rivals failed, mainly because Hamas refuses to disarm. This comes as tensions are rising on the Gaza-Israel border, with Hamas leading mass protests to try to break an Israeli-Egyptian border blockade.

Abbas told leaders of his Fatah movement he has informed Egypt of his demands and is waiting to hear back. </s> Abbas says won't return to Gaza unless Hamas cedes control

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says that unless he gets full control over the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, including the group's weapons, he will "not be responsible for what goes on" there.

Abbas' comments late Sunday dealt another blow to months of U.S.-backed Egyptian efforts to negotiate a deal that would sideline the Islamic militant Hamas and enable Abbas' self-rule government to return to Gaza.

Hamas seized Gaza from forces loyal to Abbas in 2007.

Recent talks between Abbas and his rivals failed, mainly because Hamas refuses to disarm. This comes as tensions are rising on the Gaza-Israel border, with Hamas leading mass protests to try to break an Israeli-Egyptian border blockade.

Abbas told leaders of his Fatah movement he has informed Egypt of his demands and is waiting to hear back. </s> Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah tendered his resignation on Tuesday, a spokesman said.

“He and the rest of the government ministers resigned,” Ahmad Shami, one of Hamdallah’s spokesmen, told The Times of Israel, adding that PA President Mahmoud Abbas would now have to decide whether to accept their resignations.

Hamdallah’s decision to resign came two days after the Fatah Central Committee recommended the formation of a government made up of representatives of factions in the Palestine Liberation Organization and independent personalities.

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Shami said that if Abbas accepts their resignations, Hamdallah and the other PA ministers would continue to serve until the formation of a new government.

Fatah Central Committee Member Azzam al-Ahmad said on Sunday that the Palestinians planned to form a new government in response to Hamas not handing over the Gaza Strip to the PA.

“We plan to form a new government of factions soon in response to Hamas’s failure to undertake its national responsibility in handing over the Gaza Strip to the legitimate PA,” Azzam al-Ahmad, a senior Fatah and Palestine Liberation Organization official, told The Times of Israel. “Hamas helped form the last government. This time, it will not participate in its formation or be a part of it.”

Hamas condemned the government’s resignation, saying Abbas was seeking to establish a “separatist government” to serve his interests.

The Palestinians formed the current PA government in 2014 with the support of both PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah and Hamas. Since its establishment, however, Abbas has carried out at least two cabinet reshuffles without Hamas’s consent.

Fatah and Hamas have been at loggerheads since 2007, when the terror group forcibly ousted the Fatah-dominated PA from Gaza.

While the two rival parties have signed multiple agreements to advance reconciliation and bring Gaza and the West Bank under one government, they have not implemented them.

Asked who would serve as prime minister in a new PA government, Ahmad said the Ramallah-based Palestinian leadership including Fatah has not discussed the names of any possible candidates.

“Until now, absolutely no names at all have been discussed. All the rumors are totally false,” the senior Fatah official said. “Even my name has come up and no one has asked me about the job, nor have I asked about it myself.”

In a separate interview with the An-Najah Broadcasting Channel on Monday, Ahmad reiterated that the Palestinians have not spoken about the names of candidates for PA prime minister.

The Kan public broadcaster, however, quoted Palestinian sources on Sunday as assessing that Fatah Central Committee member Muhammed Shtayyeh was the front-runner to become the next PA prime minister.

Shtayyeh, a native of Nablus, formerly served as a Palestinian negotiator and PA minister of public works and housing; he has long worked on government and donor-funded infrastructure projects in the West Bank.

Hamdallah, who previously was the president of An-Najah University, where he once was a professor of the English language, also resigned in 2013 following a dispute with then-Deputy PA prime minister Mohammed Mustafa, according to a Palestinian official, who requested anonymity.

“Mustafa signed an agreement with an international institution that Prime Minister Hamdallah was supposed to sign,” the official said. “Hamdallah then resigned but came back to the job after he was assured he would be in charge of signing agreements with international groups.”

Hamdallah hails from Anabta, a village in the northern West Bank. Three of his children were killed in a car accident between Tulkarem and Nablus in 1998.

The official added that he expected Hamdallah would return to his academic work in the near future.

Abbas has also pledged to hold new parliamentary elections in the coming six months, but how that would be possible in Gaza is unclear.

Hamas won the last parliamentary polls, in 2006, against expectations. Israel, the United States and other Western powers, which all consider Hamas a terrorist organization, rejected the result.

Hamas and Israel have fought three wars in Gaza since then.

Rumors of a new government have been swirling in recent weeks, and Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri attacked such a plan.

“The formation of any government apart from a national consensus one is a continuation of the unilateral actions taken by Fatah,” he tweeted Sunday. “Such a government will enjoy no legitimacy.” </s> "The council of ministers demands from the Hamas movement to immediately cede control over the Gaza Strip," the statement said.

According to the document, the government is ready to take responsibility for Gaza in order to save it from the dangers that surround it and prevent Israel from splitting Palestine.

The statement was issued after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had directly accused Hamas of the bomb attack on Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah's motorcade during his visit to Gaza last week and threatened to impose sanctions against the enclave.

On March 13, an explosion hit a site near Hamdallah's motorcade in the Gaza Strip. Hamdallah himself was not injured in the blast. The Palestinian National Authority placed the blame for the attack on the Hamas movement, which has been governing the Gaza Strip. Hamas, in turn, condemned the attack on Hamdallah's convoy and called on law enforcement agencies to find the perpetrators as soon as possible.

Nabil Shaath, the foreign affairs adviser of Abbas, told Sputnik in February that the intra-Palestinian reconciliation process had been put on hold, because the Hamas movement had not yet relinquished administrative control over the Gaza Strip.

READ MORE: Israeli Tanks Target Hamas Posts in Gaza in Response to Explosions — IDF

Hamas, which is listed as a terrorist organization in a number of countries, including in the United States and Israel, gained control of the Gaza Strip after a short war with Fatah in 2007. Fatah has repeatedly criticized Hamas for dividing the country and preventing the Palestinian Unity Government from ruling the Gaza Strip. </s> Gaza's Islamist leaders Hamas on Saturday publicly accused the rival Palestinian Authority (PA) of planning an assassination attempt against the head of its own government.

PA prime minister Rami Hamdallah, was unhurt when a roadside bomb hit his convoy during a rare visit to Hamas-controlled Gaza last month.

Hamdallah heads the PA's West Bank-based government under the presidency of Mahmud Abbas.

The explosion put an end to an already faltering reconciliation agreement between Hamas and secularists Fatah, which dominates the PA.

Afterwards Abbas accused Hamas of carrying out the bombing.

But on Saturday a spokesman for the Hamas interior ministry in Gaza accused senior PA security officials of orchestrating the attack to destabilise the coastal territory.

"Investigations have shown that senior figures in the General Intelligence Service in Ramallah are the engine of subversive cells that are working to undermine security in the Gaza Strip," spokesman Iyad Buzum told a press conference.

Relations between the two largest Palestinian groups are at a low, six months after they signed a reconciliation deal aimed at ending a decade-long split. </s> Hamas, the de facto ruling party of the Gaza Strip, has pledged to dissolve its administrative committee that runs the besieged coastal enclave and expressed readiness to hold general elections, in a bid for reconciliation with the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA).

A statement from Hamas movement said the decision came in response to recent diplomatic efforts by Egypt to reconcile the rival factions, while PA President Mahmoud Abbas has been calling on Hamas to end the administrative committee, relinquish control of the small territory to the PA, and hold presidential and legislative elections.

Hamas and the Fatah-led PA have been embroiled in a more than a decade-long conflict since 2006, when Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections and a bloody conflict between the two groups broke out.

 Despite numerous attempts at reconciling the groups, Palestinian leadership has repeatedly failed to follow through on promises of reconciliation and holding of long-overdue elections, as both movements have frequently blamed each other for numerous political failures.

The Hamas movement said Sunday it has dissolved its administrative committee — formed earlier this year to the outrage of the PA, agrees to hold general elections for the first time since 2006, enter talks with Fatah, and allow the national reconciliation government to operate in Gaza.

Hamas signed the reconciliation agreement with the PLO in April 2014, which was to pave the way for a general election by the end of 2014. However, a devastating 50-day Israeli attack on Gaza that year, as well as a dispute over payment of the salaries of tens of thousands of Hamas security forces, first blocked progress on the deal towards reconciliation.

The Palestinian political crisis has since only continued to worsen, and Hamas said it formed the committee after the consensus government failed to take responsibility for Gaza’s administration. The PA alleges that Hamas is attempting to form a “shadow government” to run Gaza independent of the West Bank.

In recent months, the PA has been also been accused of deliberately sending the impoverished Gaza Strip further into a humanitarian catastrophe — by slashing funding for Israeli fuel, medicine, and salaries for civil servants and former prisoners — in order to wrest control of the territory from Hamas.

Last month, Abbas threatened to undertake further repressive measures against the impoverished territory should Hamas not unconditionally abide by the PA’s demands to end the administrative committee, relinquish control of the enclave to the PA, and hold presidential and legislative elections.

Following Hamas’ acceptance of these key conditions on Sunday, senior Fatah official Mahmoud Aloul told Reuters news agency that he welcomed cautiously Hamas’s position. “If this is Hamas statement, then this is a positive sign,” he reportedly said. “We in Fatah movement are ready to implement reconciliation.”

 Fatah Central Committee member Azzam al-Ahmed also welcomed Hamas’ decision to dissolve the administrative committee, he told PA-owned Wafa news agency.

Al-Ahmed, who is currently in Cairo for Egyptian-led reconciliation talks with Hamas, told Wafa that a lengthy meeting was held between the Fatah delegation in Cairo with the head of the Egyptian intelligence service, Minister Khaled Fawzi, in which they reviewed the continuous efforts exerted by Egypt to end the Palestinian internal split.

Al-Hamad confirmed reports that the Fatah delegation met with the Hamas leadership, and “hailed Hamas’s call for the unity government to resume its normal work in Gaza as well as its approval to hold presidential and legislative elections,” according to Wafa’s report.

The Fatah official also said that there will be a bilateral meeting between Fatah and Hamas officials followed by a meeting of all the Palestinian factions that signed the May 2011 reconciliation agreement “in order to begin practical steps to implement the deal,” and expressed hope that the coming days would “witness tangible practical steps,” Wafa said.

Nickolay Mladenov, United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, also released a statement welcoming Hamas’ announcement. “I welcome the recent statement by Hamas announcing the dissolving of the Administrative Committee in Gaza and agreement to allow the Government of National Consensus to assume its responsibilities in Gaza,” he said.

“I commend the Egyptian authorities for their tireless efforts in creating this positive momentum. All parties must seize this opportunity to restore unity and open a new page for the Palestinian people,” the UN envoy continued. “The United Nations stands ready to assist all efforts in this respect. It is critical that the grave humanitarian situation in Gaza, most notably the crippling electricity crisis, be addressed as a priority.”

The development also came after head of the Hamas movement’s politburo Ismail Haniyeh and other high-ranking Hamas members met with Egyptian intelligence officials in Cairo last week, with talks focusing on a readiness to work toward national unity.

Hamas leadership told the Egyptians they would allow the Palestinian national reconciliation government to take charge of Gaza and carry out elections, so long as all Palestinian factions hold a conference in Cairo afterwards to elect a national government responsible for the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem.

An Egyptian source close to the intelligence services told Israeli news daily Haaretz that Hamas is trying to prove to Egypt that it is not obstructing reconciliation and is responding to demands, hoping to reap the benefits if and when the talks falter on the PA’s part.

Hamas has sought to improve relations with Cairo in recent months by increasing cross border security, including the construction of the military buffer zone, in hopes that Egypt will ease its enforcement of Israel’s brutal, decade-long siege of the territory and open up the Rafah border crossing. A Fatah delegation sent by Abbas to Cairo also discussed Egypt’s efforts to reconcile the Palestinians on Saturday.

Meanwhile, Abbas arrived in New York on Sunday to take part in the proceedings of the 72nd session of the United Nations General Assembly. He is to meet US President Donald Trump there on Wednesday, ahead of the Palestinian president’s speech at the UN Thursday. </s> RAMALLAH: Palestinian officials say President Mahmoud Abbas has decided to shake up his government.

The move is the latest sign of failure in more than a decade of attempts to reconcile with the rival Hamas movement.

The officials say Abbas appointed a four-member committee from his Fatah movement on Sunday to consult with political factions about forming a new government.

The three officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing internal deliberations.

The official Wafa news agency said Fatah had decided to form a political government to replace the current Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah's Cabinet of technocrats.

Hamdallah's government was formed in 2013 following a power sharing agreement with Hamas. But the government couldn't assume its responsibilities in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip ruled due to deep disputes. </s> Hamas said on Sunday it had agreed to steps toward resolving a decade-long split with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah, announcing it would dissolve a body seen as a rival government and was ready to hold elections.

The statement comes after Hamas leaders held talks with Egyptian officials last week, and with the Gaza Strip run by the Palestinian Islamist movement facing a mounting humanitarian crisis.

Hamas said it had agreed to key demands made by Fatah: dissolving the so-called "administrative committee" created in March, while saying it was ready for elections and negotiations toward a unity government.

It called on the Palestinian Authority government based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank "to come to Gaza to exercise its functions and carry out its duties immediately". Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh agreed to take such steps in talks with Egyptian officials in Cairo last week, a Hamas official has told AFP.

It was unclear, however, whether the steps would result in further concrete action toward ending the deep division with Fatah. Hamas for now continues to run a de facto separate administration in the Gaza Strip and is in charge of the security forces there.

Previous attempts to resolve the split have repeatedly failed. Abbas’s Fatah welcomed the announcement, saying it followed "extensive meetings" between its own representatives and Egyptian intelligence officials.

Fatah official Azzam al-Ahmad said a bilateral meeting with Hamas would be organised to begin working out a way forward. "There will be tangible practical steps in the next few days, starting with the Palestinian national unity government resuming its work according to law in Gaza as it does in the West Bank, in order to continue its efforts to relieve the suffering of our people in the strip and work towards lifting the unjust blockade," Ahmad told official Palestinian news agency Wafa.

The Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli blockade for around a decade, while its border with Egypt has also remained largely closed in recent years. Abbas is currently in New York for the UN General Assembly meeting, where he is set to speak on Wednesday. —
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says the PA will take no further responsibility for the Gaza Strip unless Hamas hands over full control.