Hamas refuses any Gaza ceremony to memorialize Arafat

There have been a number of stories lately indicating that Hamas and Fatah are getting closer to a re-unification. These stories are cyclical - they pop up every few months and Palestinian Arabs get excited, then something goes wrong and they then start accusing the other side of collaborating with Israel, the worst insult they can muster.

That is the reason I stopped covering those stories in my regular round-ups of the PalArabic media - because even when they do meet, nothing ever happens.

Here is another indication that reconciliation is not in the cards anytime soon.

November 11th is the sixth anniversary of the death of Yasir Arafat. While Arafat was the head of Fatah, every Palestinian Arab terror group professes respect for the last (and second) real leader that the PalArabs ever had. You will not find Hamas or Islamic Jihad insulting Arafat.

But when Fatah in Gaza wanted to organize a pan-Arab rally in commemoration of the anniversary, Hamas shut them down. Fatah says that "the leadership of the Fatah movement has a program to commemorate the anniversary in Gaza by everyone, because of the fact that Abu Ammar [Arafat] was a national leader, the leader of the Palestinian people, and does not represent any individual movement."

Keep in mind that only a couple of weeks ago, Hamas participated in a huge rally commemorating the anniversary of the death of the co-founder of the Islamic Jihad movement, Fathi Shiqaqi. So the issue isn't that Hamas doesn't recognize the leaders of other terror movements - but it does not want to even give the impression of supporting Fatah in Gaza.