Hamas calls off Independence Day declared by Arafat
Earlier in the week Fatah accused Hamas of preventing members from marking the anniversary Arafat's death.
By Reuters and Haaretz Service Tags: Hamas Israel news Fatah GazaHamas authorities have called off annual Palestinian Independence Day celebrations in the Gaza Strip, ordering its schools and offices to remain open as usual when the holiday falls on Sunday, officials said on Friday.
The decision pointed up the tensions between Hamas Islamists and the secular Fatah movement, still at odds two years after Hamas seized control of coastal Gaza.
Khaled Radi, a spokesman for Gaza's Education Ministry, said Sunday would be "a regular school day," with some lessons devoted to discussion of the holiday launched by the late Yasser Arafat, a Fatah founder, who symbolically declared Palestinian independence on November 15, 1988.
Hamas, founded a year before Arafat's declaration, rejects Fatah's vision of a two-state solution alongside Israel, does not recognize it and seeks to supplant Israel with an Islamist state, though some Hamas leaders have proposed an extended truce with Israel.
A senior Fatah official, Zeyad Abu Ein, accused Hamas of "canceling one of our greatest national holidays" and said the step would "remind the Palestinian people in Gaza of Israeli occupation and suppression of such celebrations."
Israel withdrew its forces from the Gaza Strip in 2005 but remains in control of the territory's land and sea frontiers.
Despite Hamas's decision, schools supervised by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), attended by about half of Gaza's 450,000 students, would customarily not hold classes on Sunday, a spokesman said.
Gaza's banks would also stay shut for the day as they are supervised by the Palestinian Monteary Fund, based in the Fatah-dominated West Bank where the holiday was expected to be observed as usual.
On Tuesday Fatah accused Hamas of detaining dozens of its members on Tuesday to stop them marking the 5th anniversary of the death of Yasser Arafat.
Fatah officials said Hamas security forces carried out a wave of arrests the Gaza Strip that included senior Fatah figures Mohammed Al-Nahal and Jamal Abeid
Hamas does not want to give Fatah any chance of regrouping in Gaza, and aims to retaliate for the suppression it says is regularly inflicted on its members by Fatah in the West Bank.
One Fatah official said he believed the arrests would continue on into Wednesday, the anniversary day.
Ehab Al-Ghsain, a spokesman of the Hamas Interior Ministry, denied the allegations calling them the "usual Fatah charges to cover up on the continued arrest of Hamas men in the West Bank."
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Palestinians need a new leader like Mohammed Dahlan. Arafat and Abbas are from a bygone era.
Being the wise people that they are, they decided they didn't want it Instead of accepting their share of the UN Partition Plan, they chucked it aside and attacked Israel instead You guys & gals are your own worst enemies, and you've proven it time and again Hells bells, even today Hamas & Fatah cant get along with each other Both jockeying for power and the people be damned
Arafat must have been dreaming in 1988.
There has to be an independence before once can celebrate such an occasion. Arafat might have wished independence but it did not materialize in his lifetime. Premature Jubilence and unprecedented exuberence and totaly irrelevant for a people who is still under the yoke of an occupation and three quarters of its people are in the diaspora and all stateless ....
Unless Hamas can take over the West Bank Palestinians by agression or polling booth, Hamas is definately causing a rift between Gaza Palestinians and WestBank Palestinians.