Gaza – Hamas leader Khalil al-Haya on Saturday said that “Hamas' hand was extended to Fatah to achieve reconciliation”. Al-Haya said that Hamas was strategically seeking reconciliation with its rival faction Fatah and was working towards lifting the obstacles hindering the ratification of a unity agreement, during a speech at a seminar organised by Hamas at the Al-Farouq Mosque in Gaza. "The authority in the West Bank is not showing good intensions concerning national reconciliation by arresting the resistance members," he said. On Friday, an official Hamas statement called on members of Fatah and its leaders in the PA to respond to Hamas' call to ensure national unity before entering into peace talks with Israel. Meanwhile, al-Quds newspaper said on Saturday that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would respond to a US offer to resume peace talks with Israel after he consults with Arab states. "The response will be in 10 days," the daily newspaper quoted Abbas as saying. The offer suggests that Washington mediates in indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). The Palestinians want Israel to completely stop settlement activities in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem before going back to the negotiations that have been stalled since December 2008. According to Abbas, Israel rejected US President Barack Obama 's proposal to halt the settlement and offered another plan in which settlement's building would stop for 10 months only in the West Bank. Abbas said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's offer was rejected. The PNA is also not in need of US guarantees as a means to restart the peace talks. He emphasised that the negotiations should resume from the last point they stopped at in 2008 and Israel has to stop all kinds of settlement. "Israel considers this a precondition, but this is an Israeli obligation under the Road Map," Abbas said, referring to the US- backed peace plan which envisions a Palestinian state and an Israeli state alongside each other.
