Alwaght- The Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority prime minister arrived in the besieged Gaza Strip on Monday in a move towards reconciliation between the west-backed Fatah party and the Palestinian Islamic Movement, Hamas, that governs Gaza Strip.
Rami Hamdallah, in a press conference upon his arrival, described the visit as a "historic moment" towards unity of the Palestinian people.
Al Jazeera cited Hamdallah as saying "We came at the orders of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to announce to the world, from the heart of Gaza that the Palestinian state cannot be without political and geographic unity between the West Bank and Gaza. We know that the only way to achieve our goals is through unity, and to protect the Palestinian political system."
The visit is Hamdallah's first to Gaza in two years.
"We look forward to turning over the page of division forever, and achieving comprehensive national reconciliation that would strengthen the perseverance of our people and preserve their rights," Iyad al-Buzom, spokesperson for the Ministry of Interior in Gaza, said in a statement ahead of the visit.
Hamdallah will also be visiting the Shujayea neighbourhood, where the Israeli army committed a massacre during the 2014 war on Gaza.
The visit came after a Hamas delegation met Egyptian diplomats in Cairo late last month, and declared the resistance movement decided it would dissolve its administrative committee and expressed its willingness to reconcile with its rival, the Fatah political party, after a decade of division.
Hamas has been the de-facto ruler in the Gaza Strip since 2007 after the party defeated President Mahmoud Abbas' long-dominant Fatah party in parliamentary elections.
Hamas then pushed Fatah out of Gaza in a bloody conflict, when the latter refused to recognize the result of the vote. Hamas and Fatah have ruled the Gaza Strip and the West Bank respectively ever since, and multiple attempts at reconciliation have since failed for several reasons.
The latest attempt in 2014 was thwarted when Israel launched a 51-day war against Gaza.
Hamas' control over security and its nature as an anti-occuaption movement have also constituted an obstacle for the West Bank-based Fatah, which cooperates with Israeli regime on security-related matters, as laid out in the Oslo Accords, signed in 1993 and 1995 between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel.
Tel Aviv regime has imposed an all-out siege on Gaza controls Gaza access, except at the Egyptian border, and controls all crossings between Gaza and the West Bank. Egypt has contributed to land, air, and sea blockade on the enclave. The Israeli authorities have kept the Gaza Strip mostly closed in the past two decades and especially since 2007.
Palestinian Authority has also compounded the misery of the Gazans through “punitive measures” which it has imposed to squeeze Hamas and force it to relinquish the control of the enclave.
Among a series of economic sanctions has been the reduction of payments for Gaza electricity, which has prompted Israel to drastically cut power supply to the territory of 1.8 million residents to less than four hours a day.
