Middle East Monitor / March 2, 2023
The Palestinian factions denied Fatah’s claims on Wednesday that it consulted and coordinated with them regarding the Aqaba Security Summit held in Jordan at the weekend, Al-Resalah has reported.
“The Palestinian Authority and Fatah are spreading lies in order to whitewash the shame of their participation in the Aqaba Summit,” said Arkan Bader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
The senior PFLP official denied the claim by PA official Hussein al-Sheikh and Fatah official Azzam al-Ahmad that consultation took place. He reiterated that the PLO’s Executive Committee did not discuss such participation at its meetings.
“This summit came to impose coexistence with the Israeli occupation at the expense of the core reason for the struggle, which is to end the Israeli occupation,” he pointed out.
According to Bader, PFLP leader Ramzi Rabah sent several messages to PA President Mahmoud Abbas asking him not to participate in the summit. “However, Abbas ignored these messages as he insisted on the retention of his dictatorship and not sharing the Palestinian decisions on the national issues with any other factions.”
The Secretary General of the Palestinian Initiative, Mustafa Barghouti, said that many PLO factions have stopped attending its meetings because of the “domination” of a certain body and faction.
Other Palestinian factions also denied being consulted or even contacted by the PA or Fatah regarding participation in the security summit held in Jordan, which coincided with an Israeli massacre in the city of Nablus that took the lives of ten Palestinians.
