Fatah criticizes Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for ‘unacceptable interference’

The Palestinian group Fatah has bitterly criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s call to “completely cancel” a reconciliation deal that it signed in Cairo with Hamas as “unacceptable interference,” Agence-France Presse reported on Tuesday.

Mr. Netanyahu “must respect the will of the Palestinian people and stop the unacceptable interference in internal Palestinian affairs,” said Azzam al-Ahmed, the head of the Fatah delegation in Cairo.

Representatives of 13 factions, including Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party and its rival Islamist Hamas movement, as well as independent political figures inked the deal following talks with Egyptian officials.

“We signed the deal despite several reservations. But we insisted on working for the higher national interest,” said Walid al-Awad, a politburo member of the leftist Palestinian People’s Party.

“We have discussed all the reservations. Everyone has agreed to take these points into consideration,” he told Egyptian state TV without elaborating.

“Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank will be celebrating this agreement... We must now work to implement what was agreed in the deal,” he said.

The accord also calls for the creation of an electoral tribunal and for the release of a number of prisoners held by the rival movements in jails in the West Bank and Gaza.

The signature took place in the presence of Khaled Meshaal, president of the political office of Hamas, and Azzam al-Ahmed, head of reconciliation delegation of Fatah, according to an Al Arabiya correspondent in Cairo.

An official ceremony to celebrate the final signature will be held on Wednesday in Cairo in presence of the President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority.

Among the first tasks to be tackled would be the formation of a government and the establishment of a higher security council tasked with examining ways to integrate Hamas and Fatah’s rival security forces and create a “professional” security service.

It was not immediately clear if Mr. Meshaal will meet Egypt’s military ruler, Field Marshall Mohammed Hussein Tantawi.

Israel has criticized the accord and said Mr. Abbas must choose between reconciliation with Hamas and peace with the Jewish state.

(Dina Al Shibeeb of Al Arabiya