Pictured Above: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Credit: Kremlin.ru via Wikimedia Commons.

(JNS.org) The Palestinian Authority (PA) will hold a cabinet meeting in the Gaza Strip next week, for the first time in two years, after the Gaza-ruling Palestinian terror group Hamas recently announced it would form a unity government with PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party.

“[PA] Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, in consultation with President Mahmoud Abbas, issued a decision to hold the government’s weekly cabinet meeting in the Gaza Strip,” PA government spokesman Yousif Mahmoud said Monday.

“I will go to the beloved Gaza Strip next Monday at the head of the government and with all the bodies, authorities and security services,” Hamdallah tweeted.

The move comes after Hamas stated last week that the terror group had accepted Abbas’s demands to form a joint government, which reportedly included holding Palestinian elections in the disputed territories and Gaza to settle the decade-long dispute between the rival Palestinian factions.

The move toward reconciliation between the Palestinian movements comes after the recently resolved energy crisis in Gaza. In June, the PA had decided to reduce its subsidization of the coastal territory’s monthly electricity bill to 60 percent, leading to power shortages.

Repeated attempts at forging a Palestinian unity government have failed since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007.

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