Hamas opted for reconciliation with Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah because it is short of funds and friends a decade after seizing the enclave in a brief civil war. On the eve of the handover, Hamas released five Fatah security men it jailed two years ago for what an Interior Ministry spokesman described as “actions harmful to internal security”. Speaking to reporters, one of the freed inmates, Taher Abu Armana, thanked Hamas Gaza chief Yehya Al-Sinwar and Mohammed Dahlan, a former Fatah security chief in the enclave, for his release. Dahlan, based since 2011 in the United Arab Emirates, is behind an influx of cash to prop up Gaza and detente between Hamas and Arab states including Egypt, which hosted reconciliation talks. Egypt suspended its diplomatic mission in Gaza in 2007 after the Hamas takeover.

Source: Egypt Independent October 01, 2017 13:52 UTC