عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Arab World

Fatah Official in Gaza: There are Those who do not want Reconciliation

A girl is carried as Palestinians celebrate after Hamas said it reached a deal with Palestinian rival Fatah, in Gaza City October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem
A girl is carried as Palestinians celebrate after Hamas said it reached a deal with Palestinian rival Fatah, in Gaza City October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem
TT
20
TT

Fatah Official in Gaza: There are Those who do not want Reconciliation

A girl is carried as Palestinians celebrate after Hamas said it reached a deal with Palestinian rival Fatah, in Gaza City October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem
A girl is carried as Palestinians celebrate after Hamas said it reached a deal with Palestinian rival Fatah, in Gaza City October 12, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

A Fatah official in Gaza said his movement has so far resolved many problems and weaknesses and was now ready to engage in any possible Palestinian elections in the near future.

Ahmed Halas (Abou Maher), member of Fatah central committee and general commissioner for mobilization in Gaza, told Asharq Al-Awsat that the agreement over the holding of general elections would be discussed between Fatah and other factions during an expected meeting in the Egyptian capital on Nov. 21.

According to Halas, the meeting would touch on issues related to Palestinian public affairs, including the elections and the formation of a national unity government.

“The current national consensus government will continue to assume its role until an agreement is reached to form a government or to go to legislative elections,” he said.

Asked about his movement’s readiness to participate in the elections, Halas stressed that Fatah was ready to run for the elections in Gaza, the West Bank and all the Palestinian territories, adding: “Fatah has regained its popularity and succeeded in reaching the minds of the Palestinian people.”

The official, who took part in the recent reconciliation understandings in Cairo, said that a bilateral meeting would be held on the first of December between Fatah and Hamas leaders and would focus on evaluating the process of handing over the Gaza Strip to the national consensus government.

Responding to a question about a possible visit by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to Gaza, Halas said the issue was related to the process of reconciliation, which he hoped would be completed soon.

He noted that Fatah would hold a national ceremony on Saturday to commemorate the passing of 13 years since the death of President Yasser Arafat, stressing that the ceremony would be a national day par excellence.
“I think everyone wants to invest this occasion to show Palestinian unity”, he stated.

Halas noted however, that some parties, which he declined to name, wanted reconciliation to fail.

“We know that there are those who want the Palestinian reconciliation to succeed, and those who are afraid of such reconciliation, because they want the Palestinian people to remain divided,” he said.

Most Viewed

 
Arab World

Shining Light on Austin Tice who Went Missing in Syria

A banner for journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared while reporting in Syria in 2012, hangs outside the National Press Club building in Washington, US, May 2, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File phot
A banner for journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared while reporting in Syria in 2012, hangs outside the National Press Club building in Washington, US, May 2, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File phot
TT
20
TT

Shining Light on Austin Tice who Went Missing in Syria

A banner for journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared while reporting in Syria in 2012, hangs outside the National Press Club building in Washington, US, May 2, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File phot
A banner for journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared while reporting in Syria in 2012, hangs outside the National Press Club building in Washington, US, May 2, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File phot

In recent months, American officials have raised the fate of Austin Tice in talks with Syria’s new leadership, led by its interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa.

The American citizen vanished in 2012 in a Damascus suburb.

According to Britain’s The Economist, the American side still insists that Tice may be alive and says there is no evidence of his death.

The magazine has spoken with an Assad-regime insider and gained one of the first authoritative public accounts of the abduction and an insight into one of the former Syrian regime’s darkest secrets.

The source is Safwan Bahloul, a high-ranking general in then Syrian president Bashar Assad’s security state. He has chosen to speak out and share details of Tice’s ordeal. He confirms that Tice was held not by opposition groups, but rather by the Syrian state, with Assad’s full knowledge, and was held for some time in a compound of the former president’s most trusted aide. The general also reveals his own culpability.

In the summer of 2012, Bassam al-Hassan, a shadowy adviser in Assad’s inner circle, learned that Tice was in the suburbs of Damascus. He set in motion a plan to seize him, according to General Bahloul. A freelance journalist contributing to the Washington Post, Tice was preparing to take a break in Lebanon after a grueling period reporting in opposition-held Syria. He sought a fixer to try to cross the border, and it turned out the fixer was working for Hassan, the general claims.

After he was captured, Tice was held in a garage inside Hassan’s compound, not far from the presidential palace, says the general. The site lay outside the regime’s formal prison system—off the books and under direct control of Assad loyalists. Was Assad aware of the abduction? “He knew, absolutely, he was happy with the capture,” the general says.

Bahloul was ordered to interrogate Tice. The journalist “had a satellite communications device...an iPhone and another small phone. I started going through his phone book, you know, trying to have a clue who he is.”

Bahloul confirms that Tice managed to escape his cell for 24 hours (this was originally reported by Reuters). The general himself was suspected of aiding the escape attempt (something he denies), though he was later cleared.

“He rubbed his body with the soap in order to lubricate his chest when getting through the window, and he used the towel...There was broken glass, cemented broken glass on top of a fence. So, he put it upon it, and then he climbed it and threw himself to the other side,” said the general. Tice was recaptured.

Bahloul has settled his affairs with Syria’s new rulers and is one of a handful of senior officers not to have fled the country. He says he did not see Tice again after his fourth and final interrogation. The last confirmed information on the reporter was a video uploaded to YouTube in September 2012 in which he is seen blindfolded and surrounded by masked men shouting “Allahu Akbar.”

American officials believe the video was staged to make it look like Tice had been captured by militants and not the regime. The video was masterminded by Hassan and shot in the countryside north of Damascus, says Bahloul.

In December, as the Assad regime crumbled, thousands of desperate prisoners were broken out of Syria’s sprawling torture-and-detention network after Assad fled to Moscow, raising hopes that Tice might be among them. He was not.

Today the Trump administration and Tice’s family continue to ask questions. One possibility is that he is alive and still in Syria, perhaps hidden somewhere in the remote farmland of the country’s Alawite coastal heartland, parts of which remain outside the control of Sharaa’s security forces. Another is that he was spirited out of the country to Iran, or Hezbollah-controlled parts of Lebanon. Or he may have been abandoned in a hidden prison, or killed amid the chaos of the revolution, another victim of Assad’s reign of terror. One man may have the answer: Hassan, the shadowy adviser, who is believed to have fled to Iran and may now be in Beirut.