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Cairo (AFP) April 28, 2011 Democratic upheavals in Arab countries and the failure of US-sponsored negotiations with Israel helped bring about a unity deal between feuding Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas, their officials said on Thursday. The two sides have been bitterly opposed since Hamas seized the Gaza Strip in 2007, reducing Fatah's powerbase to the West Bank, and Egyptian-mediated efforts to end the rift repeatedly proved unsuccessful. But in a surprise announcement on Wednesday after a low-key meeting in Cairo, leaders of the two factions announced that they reached the elusive agreement to form an interim government that would prepare for elections. Mahmud Zahar, a senior Hamas official in Cairo for the talks, said "a change in the (regional) political environment and the failure in negotiations" influenced the two sides to reach an agreement. Azzam al-Ahmed, who headed Fatah's delegation in Cairo, said the "Arab spring placed pressure" on both factions to end the division, which left the Palestinians with rival governments in Gaza and the West Bank. "The people began to feel and demand their freedom," he said. The mass protests in Tunisia and Egypt that ousted their leaders inspired thousands of Palestinians to take to the streets in Gaza and the West Bank to demand an end to the division. "There was real pressure by all the factions and the Palestinian youth," Ahmed said. The Egypt revolt also removed intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, whom Hamas had accused of favouring Fatah, from the negotiations he was mediating, while depriving Palestinian president Abbas of a key supporter in ousted leader Hosni Mubarak. Ahmed added that the "obstruction in the peace process" helped bring the two sides to close the rift. "The division was an excuse (to prolong the occupation)," he said. Direct negotiations between Abbas's West Bank-based Palestinian Authority and Israel stalled late last year over a dispute about ongoing Jewish settlement activity. Following the collapse of peace talks, Abbas has been pursuing a diplomatic strategy aimed at securing UN recognition for a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with east Jerusalem as its capital, in a move likely to take place in September.
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