GAZA, (PIC)-- Senior Hamas official Salah Al-Bardawil belittled the importance of Mahmoud Abbas's declared intention to stop the media smear campaign against Hamas Movement so as to create a climate for national reconciliation.
Bardawil said that Abbas' orders to stop the smear campaign is a media stunt because his focus of interest is not to end the inter-Palestinian division but to keep the security cooperation and the peace talks with Israel.
He underlined that Abbas was not honest about his intentions towards Hamas and his talk about halting media incitement against it is useless because his political arrest campaign in the West Bank never stopped against its cadres for a moment.
A spokesman for Fatah faction had said that Abbas issued orders to stop all media campaigns against Hamas.
In a related context, director of the Palestinian center of studies in Cairo Ibraheem Adderawi disclosed that Abbas's recent visit to Cairo was intended to curtail any Egyptian response with Hamas's demands regarding the Palestinian reconciliation and to read Egypt's new political landscape after the revolution.
Derawi added that Abbas stressed during his meeting with Egyptian officials the need for continuing to close Rafah border crossing (in order to help Israel tighten the blockade on Gaza) and not to recognize Hamas until it accepts the Palestinian reconciliation according to Fatah's vision.
He expressed his belief that this position explains why head of Fatah's parliamentary bloc Azzam Al-Ahmed avoided meeting with Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Zahhar while in Cairo and Abbas with political leader Khaled Mishaal.
"I have information that Mahmoud Abbas has issued a circular to his authority's embassies all over the world in which he confirmed that Egypt's stance towards the Palestinian issue had not changed and that Cairo would not deal with Hamas or recognize it, so Abbas's visit to Cairo was not for a reconciliation with Hamas, but it was to curb Egypt's sympathy with it and to read the Egyptian political scene following the downfall of president Hosni Mubarak," the center director emphasized.
River to Sea
Uprooted Palestinian
