REPORT: Khaled Meshaal to make historical Gaza trip on Friday

Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal will make his first visit to the Gaza Strip on Friday to attend the Palestinian Islamist group's 25th anniversary rally, Hamas sources said on Wednesday (December 5).                 

The two-day visit comes in the wake of last month's air offensive by Israel against Hamas and other armed Islamist factions to stop them firing rockets from the enclave at southern Israeli towns.                    

Meshaal is expected to address Saturday's Hamas anniversary rally, when it is customary to outline strategy for the near future regarding internal politics as well as the conflict with Israel.             

Meshaal strongly backed the diplomatic initiative by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to upgrade Palestinian status at the United Nations to "observer state", which the General Assembly endorsed in New York.             

In a recent interview with Reuters, he said the de facto recognition of a sovereign Palestinian state won by his rival Abbas should be seen alongside Gaza's latest conflict with Israel as a single, bold strategy that could empower all Palestinians.          

His comments revived long-stalled hopes in Gaza and the West Bank that the two Palestinian groups, who have been mutually hostile since 2007, could eventually heal their rifts and implement an Egyptian unity deal Abbas and Meshaal endorsed in 2011.             

Khaled Meshaal was born in the West Bank village of Silwad, living there for the first eleven years of his life. The Meshaal family home stands empty within the village to this day.               

"Here is the neighbourhood of Khaled Meshaal all these homes from here to up there are for Meshaal family," said local school teacher, Awni Fares.           

Since fleeing Silwad as a child, Meshaal has lived in a number of countries. The Hamas chief has never returned to the village of his birth.              

"Khaled Meshaal was born in Silwad village in 1956 and lived the first 11 years of his life here in this village and he studied in Silwad school until the fourth grade and then he was here during 1967 war; and here in Silwad many citizens were killed during the war and he saw the Palestinian tragedy in 1967 and after that he left to Kuwait," Fares added.              

Meshaal was later expelled from Jordan in 1999, and moved to Qatar and then to Damascus in 2001. He survived a Mossad assassination attempt in Amman in 1997, when Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was last in power.              

Under Meshaal's leadership since 2004, the Islamists have refused to renounce their claim to all of pre-1948 "Palestine", but have been willing to accept a de facto Palestinian state on the lands Israel captured in the 1967 Six Day War.                   

Meshaal ran the Hamas group from exile in Damascus from 2004 until January this year when he quit the Syrian capital because of President Bashar al-Assad's bloody war with fellow-Sunni Muslim rebels. He now divides his time between Doha and Cairo.                  

It was unclear whether Meshaal's visit would mark the conclusion of a secretive Hamas internal leadership election that has been going on for the past six months.                   

He had declared that he wanted to leave the post, but he may bow to those among the movement's top ranks and its allies who believe he ought to remain in command.


REUTERS


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