Hamas number 2 slams Abbas

Hamas Deputy Chief Moussa Abu Marzouk has claimed that his party could not hold internal elections in the West Bank because of security issues: “There is no safe place for the Shura Council to meet, which prevents Hamas from electing a successor to Khaled Meshaal.” Marzouk is very likely to be elected. In a different context, Abu Marzouk slammed the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for organising general and legislative elections – a precondition to the Palestinian reconciliation: “We know that Mahmoud Abbas is under a huge amount of pressure from Washington regarding the Palestinian reconciliation, but our aim is to unify in order to build a stronger resistance to the occupation.” On the other hand, Abu Marzouk also revealed that the leader of the Palestinian Islamist Jihad, Ramadan Shallah, has been prevented from entering Gaza by the Israeli occupation: “We were informed by the Egyptian government that Ramadan Shallah was denied access to the Strip: this is a breach of the cease-fire agreement.”