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Hamas wants Fatah to halt a campaign of "arrests and repression" against the Islamist group in the West Bank, a top Hamas official said on Sunday.
Egypt has invited Hamas and Fatah, President Mahmoud Abbas's group, along with smaller Palestinian factions to a meeting in Cairo on Nov. 9 to settle the conflict between the two heavyweights, which deepened after Hamas seized control of Gaza last year and Abbas started talks with Israel.
"It is impossible for Hamas to participate in the dialogue with a single prisoner remaining in Abbas's jails," Hamas politburo member Izzat al-Rishq told Reuters in the Syrian capital.
"The campaign of arrests and repression is expanding as the date for the Cairo dialogue nears. It is competing with the Israeli occupation in viciousness," he added.
Rishq said Fatah was holding some 400 Hamas members in West Bank jails it controls and was extending a crackdown on Hamas in Hebron, the West Bank's biggest city, to surrounding villages.
A senior Hamas delegation will travel to Egypt on Monday to put its view to Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who is steering Cairo's initiative, he added.
Suleiman has been holding separate talks with all the Palestinian factions. A previous attempt to bring Hamas and Fatah together in Cairo failed, Palestinian sources said.
"We have communicated with Egyptian leadership, explained how dangerous the situation is in the West Bank and asked them for quick action to make the Cairo dialogue a success," said Rishq, who lives in exile in Syria along with other high-level members of Hamas, including its leader Khaled Meshaal.
PHOTO CAPTION
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas
Reuters
