ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas together with Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Ankara on Wednesday, Erdogan’s office said.
Abbas is paying a visit to Turkey and had previously met with Erdogan on Tuesday.
Abbas and Haniyeh have been unable to repair a rift since 2007, when Hamas, which opposes peace deals with Israel, seized control of the Gaza Strip. Abbas’ Western-backed Palestinian Authority remains dominant in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
On Tuesday, Abbas agreed with Haniyeh, who currently resides between Qatar and Turkey, to hold a broad meeting of factions in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, at the end of July, to discuss the conflict with Israel and ways to end internal divisions.
Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank held little hope the meetings could reconcile the ongoing power struggle between Hamas and Abbas’ Fatah faction, the backbone of the Palestinian Authority, after many failed attempts in the past 16 years.
In a statement issued by Hamas on Wednesday, the group said its leaders reaffirmed in Tuesday’s meeting with Abbas that “resistance was the most efficient way to confront the (Israeli) occupation.”
(Reporting by Huseyin Hayatsever and Nidal Al Mughrabi; Editing by Daren Butler, Andrew Heavens and Emma Rumney)
