Today, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and the Hamas leadership are supposed to sign a reconciliation accord initialed by all 13 Palestinian factions in Cairo yesterday.
This comes after a bitter, extremely bitter, rivalry between the two largest Palestinian political factions
Here is an account — to mark this date, and “in the spirit of things”, as a colleague has written elsewhere –of the time that Mahmoud Abbas gave Ismail Haniyah, Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, refuge to save his live when Haniyeh feared being killed in an Israeli bombing or targetted assassination.
This story was told to me in an interview in Ramallah in late 2008 by Mahmoud Abbas’ oldest surviving son, Yasser Abbas [Mazen, the first-born male child in the family, died after surgery in Qatar some years ago].
I have since been told by others that Abu Mazen often tells people this same story:
“Do you know a story – it’s important, before I tell you other stories about me – that this house that they [Hamas] seized [in Gaza in mid-June 2007], that Ismail Haniyeh took refuge in it twice. When he thought that Israeli jets were chasing him, he came to my parents’ house at 3:30 in the morning. To be exact, it was 3:25, because my Mom told me the details. They were still up, and they heard the bell ringing. And my Mom told my Dad, ‘Hold on, I’ll open the door’. She went to open the door, then she saw Ismail Haniyeh in her face. And then she saw Maher, one of the guards there, and he said to her, ‘Madam, we have so-and-so coming here’. And she ran back and told my Dad,’“Ismail Haniyeh is at the door’. He said, ‘Tell him to come in. Tell him to come in’. So, she automatically puts the lights on in the living room, for him to come in. She told him, ‘Come in, come in. Mr. President will come to see you in a minute’. So he came, and he was complaining to my Dad. He took refuge at his house in Gaza, because he was afraid that the Israelis were trying to nail him. And it happened again, three days later. He took refuge there for two or three hours, and then they left in the morning“…
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