A masked Hamas militant mans a machine gun in the back of a pickup truck in the Palestinian city of Rafah, located in the southern Gaza Strip, on Oct. 17, 2019. The yellow flags of the Palestinian party Fatah can also be seen in the background.
What Happened A Turkey-brokered agreement to hold the first Palestinian elections in 15 years suggests a new appetite for cooperation between the territories’ staunch political rivals, along with a new mediating role for Ankara, in light of warming Israeli-Arab Gulf relations. On Sept. 23-24, high-level representatives from Palestinian parties Fatah and Hamas met in Istanbul for a two-day discussion hosted by Turkey’s foreign ministry. After the meeting, a Hamas spokesperson announced that the two parties — which have been engaged in more than a decade of infighting — had agreed to begin planning elections within six months. Hamas’s surprise electoral victory in 2006 risked jeopardizing the political dominance Fatah had carefully built over years. Since then, the two sides have been locked in a fierce political battle , with controversy over when and how to hold the territories’ next round of elections at the core.
