Meeting in Algiers between the Palestinian president and the head of Hamas

Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune brought together Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, Ismaïl Haniyeh, on Tuesday (July 5th) in Algiers, a

meeting which comes after

, Algerian national television reported. .

Representatives of the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas movement also attended this meeting, the same source said.

Abbas and Haniyeh are in Algiers to attend festivities marking the 60th anniversary of Algeria's independence.

Abdelmadjid Tebboune and his Palestinian counterpart have also co-signed a document christening a street in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, with the name of Algeria, according to the same source.

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Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party have been at loggerheads since 2007, when the Islamists took control of Gaza after bloody clashes.

Even today, the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority sits in the occupied West Bank, where more than 2.8 million Palestinians live, while the Gaza Strip, a microterritory of 2.3 million inhabitants under Israeli blockade, remains under Hamas control.

Abdelmadjid Tebboune had launched by receiving Abbas in Algiers in December 2021 an initiative intended to promote reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, but it did not result in the slightest rapprochement between the two rival groups.