Palestinian deal ‘a blow to prospects for peace’

PALESTINIAN leaders formally ended a four-year rift between secular Fatah and the Islamist Hamas at a ceremony in Egypt, a reconciliation their people see as crucial for their drive to set up an independent state.

Israel, which in 1967 captured the territories — the West Bank and Gaza Strip — where the Palestinians seek statehood, decried the deal as a blow to prospects for peace.

“We announce to Palestinians that we turn forever the black page of division,” Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah’s leader, said in his opening address.