RAMALLAH: A pro-Islamist newspaper was sold in the West Bank yesterday for the first time in seven years, another sign of a Palestinian unity pact that prompted Israel to suspend peace talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
His Palestinian Authority permitted printers to roll out the tabloid, Falesteen, Arabic for Palestine, three days after Hamas Islamists in control of Gaza allowed a West Bank daily to be sold in their midst.
Iyad Al Qara, director general of Falesteen, said its reappearance in the West Bank was “a positive and important step towards pushing reconciliation forward.”
The newspaper was last sold in the West Bank in 2007, when ties ruptured over Hamas’s bloody seizure of control in Gaza, while Fatah retained control in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Al Quds, the biggest-selling Palestinian daily in the West Bank, resumed sales in Gaza on Wednesday.
REUTERS
