RAMALLAH, September 18, 2017 (WAFA) – Presidential advisor for international affairs, Nabil Shaath, said Monday that Egypt played a vital role in getting Hamas to agree to dissolve its Gaza administrative committee and agree on reconciliation.

He said regional and international developments have led Hamas to understand that it has no alternative other than to reunite its ranks with the Palestinian Authority and bring the Palestinian situation out of its 10-year long division and strife.

Shaath said that in spite of failure of many previous agreements between Fatah and Hamas to end the division, he is more optimistic this time about the results, mainly because Egypt is going to oversee the reconciliation talks.

He said he expects that Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah will travel to Gaza in the coming few days and that he will be treated with respect and full cooperation from Hamas, which has been ruling the Gaza Strip since its 2007 coup against the Palestinian Authority.

Once Hamdallah is in Gaza and his government starts to run the various departments, the next step would be meetings between Fatah and Hamas along with other political factions to start laying out the ground rules to actual reunification and resolving all outstanding issues.

He said however that the 2011 reconciliation agreement had full details in dealing with all issues, including the staff Hamas has hired to run the Gaza institutions following the boycott by the Palestinian Authority employees, and that all that is expected to be done is how to start enforcing it on the ground.

This may take some time, he said, but at least the Hamdallah government will be in charge in Gaza and will be working on bridging the administrative gap between the two parts of the Palestinian territories - the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

M.K.