Fatah: 2-state solution must be given up

Abdullah Abu Semehdana Gaza - Mohammed Habib The head of Palestinian party Fatah's executive board in Gaza, Abdullah Abu Semehdana, has said in an exclusive interview with Arabstoday, that "the internal controversies of Hamas are preventing the national reconciliation, as some powerful leaders of the Islamist resistance movement don't want this reconciliation to take place". Semehdana told Arabstoday that "some Hamas leaders have publicly declared their rejection to the Doha agreement signed by president Mahmoud Abbas and the head of Hamas's political bureau, Khaled Meshaal, which included the formation of a national consensus government led by Abbas". He added: "A lot of points were agreed in the joint meetings between Fatah and Hamas, but they were never applied in reality, including permitting the Central Committee for Elections to work in Gaza, which is still suspended." "It seems like some of Hamas's leaders are working for themselves instead of the nation, so they are eager not to let any serious step towards the Palestinian national reconciliation be taken", said the Fatah official. The leader insisted his movement "will go all the way to end the political split that threatens the Palestinian cause". He also said Fatah was "fully committed to all the agreements signed earlier", denying accusations that Fateh was not applying them. Semehdana said that Hamas's government was solely responsible for the frequent crises suffered by Gaza's population, "as they have imposed their authority upon the Strip", saying Hamas "has to explain why these crises are witnessed only in Gaza and not the West Bank". The official also denied Hamas's claims that the arrest policy towards its members in the West Bank went on, saying "all freedoms are guaranteed in the West Bank, and all those who are still detained are security suspects, so their lives will be in danger if they are released". When asked about the issue over passports, he answered: "We have agreed that each Palestinian citizen has the right to have a passport whatever his political inclination is, so if there is a possibility to send the passport registration files to Gaza, we will, if not, we will issue the passports for the Strip's population from Ramallah." Semehdana also said the two-state solution "must be given up" on response to Israeli stubbornness regerding their settlement policy "which kills any hope in any political process". Abu Semehdana said the two-state solution had "no chance in reality, due to the Israeli settlements in large swathes of Palestinian territories and the rest separated by walls and barriers that the Palestinians can't pass through without Israel's permission". He also referred to the "judaisation policy" in Jerusalem, which is "intended to hide the genuine Arab identity of the city, aiming to adopt it as the capital of the the so-called Jewish state". The Fatah leader urged the international community to "bear its responsibility towards the peace process in the Middle East, and to push the Israeli government to put an end to the settlement policy, by which they may show some respect to international law". He also called on the Palestinian national powers "to readopt the one-state solution as a last choice to address the Netanyahu government's arrogance in dealing with Palestinian rights".