Erdogan meets Palestinian president, Hamas leader in Ankara

ISTANBUL: Turkey’s leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday spoke in Ankara with the Palestinian president and the head of Hamas in the run-up to a crucial meeting of Palestinian factions set for the weekend.

Erdogan, who has good ties with Mahmud Abbas of the Fatah party and Hamas’s political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh, has said his government will do its best to push for intra-Palestinian reconciliation. He told Wednesday’s meeting, which was held behind closed doors, that a lack of unity among the Palestinians benefited those “who wanted to undermine peace” according to the Turkish leader’s office.

An official in the Palestinian presidency told AFP that Abbas “invited all Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, to attend the meeting of the heads of the factions in Cairo” on Sunday. The meeting will “discuss how to confront aggression against the Palestinian people, especially from the extremist Israeli government, and to strengthen Palestinian unity,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Sources close to the Fatah party and Hamas said that the Ankara meeting organised by Erdogan focused on Palestinian unity and how to end divisions.

The meeting is “very important especially in light of the continuation of the Israeli aggression in Jerusalem and the West Bank and the continuation of settlement activity,” the sources said. Israel has occupied the West Bank since the Six-Day War of 1967.

Since early last year, the territory has seen a string of attacks by Palestinians on Israeli targets, as well as violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinian communities.