UPDATE - Egypt intel czar in Gaza for Hamas-Fatah reconciliation

*UPDATES WITH HANIYEH’S REMARKS

By Nour Abu Aisha

GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) - Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Tuesday met with Egyptian intelligence chief Khaled Fawzi, who arrived in the blockaded Gaza Strip earlier the same day.

“Egypt’s position reflects the will of the Egyptian people and our determination to end Palestinian division and achieve national reconciliation,” Haniyeh said during his meeting with Fawzi, according to a statement released by Hamas.

“We discussed all issues in detail with our Egyptian interlocutors,” he added. “Together, we brainstormed means of achieving a successful outcome.”

Haniyeh described Fawzi’s visit as a “historic” one, which had led to “considerable optimism” that Palestinian political division would become “a thing of the past”.

He went on to say that a Hamas delegation that had recently visited Cairo had taken “important steps towards ending the [Palestinian] rift”.

Those steps, Haniyeh asserted, had begun with Hamas’s recent decision to dissolve an administrative committee -- a move Ramallah had demanded for months -- “thus easing the [unity] government’s entry into Gaza”.

He added: “We will pursue reconciliation [with rival faction Fatah] no matter the cost and address our outstanding differences no matter how difficult.”

Fawzi, for his part, thanked both Hamas and the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority “for their recent moves towards national reconciliation”.

The Egyptian intelligence chief arrived in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday morning for talks with members of the Palestinian unity government.

Earlier the same day, Fawzi met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah, the Palestinian government’s administrative capital.

No details, however, have yet been released regarding issues discussed between Abbas and Fawzi.

In a landmark move later Tuesday, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah held his first cabinet meeting in Gaza since the unity government was drawn up in 2014.

Cairo is currently leading efforts to heal a decade-long political split between Gaza-based Hamas and the West Bank-based Fatah movement.

The West Bank and the Gaza Strip have remained politically and administratively divided since 2007, when Hamas wrested control of the strip from Fatah following several days of bloody street fighting.

Hamas’s capture of Gaza in 2007 ended a short-lived unity government established after Hamas swept 2006 Palestinian legislative polls, the results of which were rejected by Fatah, Israel and several western powers.