In
exclusive statements to IslamOnline on Tuesday, January 28, sources
attending the talks said that the talks collapsed when the podium
opened on the limits of the proposed Palestinian state.
The
Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) FLP and the
Damascus-based Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP)
agreed to the establishment of a Palestinian state with Al-Quds
(Jerusalem) as its capital, since the international legitimacy laws
stipulated that the occupied Palestinian territories are the pre-1967
bordered land.
But
the Fatah delegation objected to such a proposal at the last moment.
While Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups insisted no international
resolutions should be cited in any joint formula that might come out
of the talks.
The
sources said according these opposing positions, dialogue is to resume
later in a fresh effort to hammer out a settlement aimed at closing
ranks of Palestinian factions.
The
Palestinians missed a certain chance for clinching an agreement here,
the sources said, pointing a finger at regional powers standing behind
the failure of the inter-Palestinian dialogue.
In
a short meeting with Egyptian Intelligence Service chief Omar
Suleiman, the leaders of Palestinian resistance groups told the
Egyptian side they failed in their first face-to-face meeting to reach
an agreement under claims of short time of negotiations and large
number of issues tabled for discussions.
Unified
National Command
Maher
Taher, head of PFLP delegation said Monday that a drafting committee
was formed to draw up the document which will be submitted to
delegates for approval and publication at the end of the talks.
“The
main point is the formation of a unified national command comprising
the 12 Palestinian factions,” including Hamas and Islamic Jihad
groups as well as Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s mainstream
Fatah movement, Taher said to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Taher
said Arafat’s Palestinian Authority had raised no objection to the
unified command, seeing it as a complement rather than a challenge to
its leadership.
The
PFLP official declined to be drawn on whether his group supported a
halt to bomb attacks against Israeli targets, saying that it would be
for the new unified command to decide how best to continue the more
than two-year-old Palestinian uprising.
Both
Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as well as the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a
Fatah offshoot, have expressed strong opposition to calls from the
Palestinian leadership for a suspension of attacks against civilians.
However,
in Gaza, senior Hamas official Abdel Aziz Rantissi said he believed
the Cairo talks were “positive” and that the Palestinian factions
were in agreement on the need to close ranks.
He
qualified that by saying Hamas “will never abandon the
resistance.”
