Hamas, its Gaza Strip stronghold cut off by the new military-backed government in Egypt, called upon rival Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on 19 October to end their six-year schism and form a unity government. Abbas’s secular, US-backed Fatah faction lost a 2006 ballot to Hamas. They sat in an uneasy alliance until a civil war the following year left Hamas ruling Gaza while Abbas’s authority was limited to the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Egypt brokered a Palestinian reconciliation deal in 2011 but it was never implemented. In Cairo, meanwhile, President Mohamed Morsi was toppled by the army, which treats Egypt’s Hamas neighbors as security threats.
“Our conditions do not allow for keeping up differences,” Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister in the Gaza administration, said in a speech calling on Abbas and Fatah to renew dialogue with Hamas, schedule new elections and enter a temporary power-share. “Let’s have one government, one Parliament and one president,” Haniyeh said. Haniyeh sought to soften tensions with Cairo, denying Egyptian accusations the group had intervened in the internal unrest on behalf of Morsi’s supporters. “We have not intervened in internal Egyptian affairs, neither in Sinai nor anywhere else in Egypt,” Haniyeh said.