Hamas chief in Gaza says Palestinian unity deal is collapsing

GAZA – Palestinian Islamist group Hamas's leader in Gaza said on Thursday a reconciliation deal with President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction was collapsing, just 10 weeks after the agreement was reached.

The rivals signed a deal brokered by Cairo on Oct. 12 after Hamas agreed to hand over administrative control of the Gaza Strip, including its border crossings with Egypt and Israel, a decade after seizing control of the enclave in a civil war.

The deal bridged a deep gulf between Abbas's Western-backed mainstream Fatah and Hamas, an Islamist movement designated a terrorist group by Western countries and Israel. But continued disputes have delayed its implementation.

Yehya Al-Sinwar, Hamas's chief in Gaza and a key architect of the unity agreement, offered a bleak outlook on Thursday, suggesting the deal could suffer a similar fate to numerous reconciliation attempts over the past decade.