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Hamas urges fatah to release political prisoners in wbank jails

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A senior Hamas delegation will travel to Egypt on Monday to put its view to Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who is steering Cairo’s initiative, senior Hamas official said.

Hamas wants Fatah to halt a campaign of "arrests and repression" against the Islamist group in the West Bank, a top Hamas official said on Sunday.

Egypt has invited Hamas and Fatah, President Mahmoud Abbas’s group, along with smaller Palestinian factions to a meeting in Cairo on Nov. 9 to settle the conflict between the two heavyweights, which deepened after Hamas seized control of Gaza last year and Abbas started talks with Israel.

"It is impossible for Hamas to participate in the dialogue with a single prisoner remaining in Abbas’s jails," Hamas politburo member Izzat al-Rishq told Reuters in the Syrian capital.

"The campaign of arrests and repression is expanding as the date for the Cairo dialogue nears. It is competing with the Israeli occupation in viciousness," he added.

Rishq said Fatah was holding some 400 Hamas members in West Bank jails it controls and was extending a crackdown on Hamas in Hebron, the West Bank’s biggest city, to surrounding villages.

A senior Hamas delegation will travel to Egypt on Monday to put its view to Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who is steering Cairo’s initiative, he added.

Suleiman has been holding separate talks with all the Palestinian factions. A previous attempt to bring Hamas and Fatah together in Cairo failed, Palestinian sources said.

"We have communicated with Egyptian leadership, explained how dangerous the situation is in the West Bank and asked them for quick action to make the Cairo dialogue a success," said Rishq, who lives in exile in Syria along with other high-level members of Hamas, including its leader Khaled Meshaal.

Amending paper

Hamas and Fatah disagree on how to approach talks with Israel and how to resolve the dispute which led to Hamas taking control of the tiny Gaza Strip.

Hamas routed Abbas’s forces in Gaza in June 2007. In response, Abbas dismissed the Hamas-led Palestinian government and appointed a new administration in the occupied West Bank, where Fatah holds sway.

On Saturday Abbas sent hundreds of security officers to Hebron, where a minority of Jewish settlers live, as part of an Israeli- and Western-backed strategy to strengthen his control over the occupied West Bank.

Hamas recently released around 20 members of Fatah it described as political prisoners in Gaza, in what it said was a gesture before the Palestinian unity talks, and Rishq said the group no longer holds any Fatah members in Gaza.

He said Hamas wants Egypt to amend a reconciliation paper due to be discussed at the Nov. 9 meeting.

Hamas wants the paper to leave out issues such as extending Abbas’s presidential term, which expires in January, unless this is part of a comprehensive settlement, and giving him a new mandate to negotiate with Israel.

"We have observations about the Egyptian paper and we insist on reaching a consensus on it before the talks are under way," Rishq said.

Reuters

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