Hamas: Palestinian unity government expires Dec. 2

Hamas leader Moussa Abu Marzouq on Wednesday said that the mandate of the Palestinian government of national unity between the PLO and Hamas will expire on Dec. 2.

The announcement comes six months after the government was first established with the understanding that national elections would take place soon after to replace the technocratic leadership that an agreement earlier this year put into place.

An Israeli campaign to undermine the agreement, which came after seven years of division, has however thwarted hopes for new elections, as June saw the largest military offensive in the West Bank since the Second Intifada and July-August saw one of the bloodiest assaults on Gaza in history.

The announcement of the apparently pending end of the mandate was made by Hamas leader Abu Marzouq in a letter sent to Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine leader Qais Abu Laila that Abu Marzouq posted on his Facebook.

In the letter, Abu Marzouq posed a series of questions to Abu Laila in response to the former's call for Hamas to begin a national dialogue by revealing the results of an investigation into the identities of those responsible for a series of bomb blasts that hit Fatah leader's properties in Gaza earlier in the month.

Abu Marzouq's questions, reproduced below in full, take Abu Laila to task for assumptions regarding Hamas responsibility in the blasts as well as others regarding the national context:

1. When did the national dialogue begin? When did it end?

2. What does the national dialogue have to do with condemned actions, i.e. the Gaza blasts?

3. What if the security services fail to reveal those responsible for the blasts?

4. What is the relationship of Hamas, which was considered responsible even before an investigation had started, to the blasts?

5. The President said he knows who is responsible for the blasts and that he has names. How would an investigation be useful?

6. If the president refuses an investigation, why complain?

7. Who doesn't Rami Hamdallah, as the Minister of Internal Affairs, employ the Gaza security services to investigate the incident?

Abu Marzouq added that Hamas is the most vocal political party supporting and calling for the national consensus government to carry out its responsibilities in Gaza.