Appointed PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has reportedly offered space in a unity government to Hamas, the Associated Press reported Sunday.
Fayyad told the news organization that the move was aimed at ensuring presidential and legislative elections would go forward by September, after Hamas earlier refused to participate in the PA-run call to vote.
According to the AP report, Hamas would remain in power in Gaza under an agreement that it would see it maintain a ceasefire with Israel, while Fayyad would govern in the West Bank.
In Damascus, Hamas politburo chief Khalid Mash'al told the party-affiliated Palestine Information Center that "new initiatives" were in store from the Islamist movement.
PIC said the comments came shortly after the US used its veto in the UN Security Council to quash a draft resolution seeking the condemnation of Israeli settlement construction on occupied Palestinian lands.
"In upcoming days we have a word we will say, an act we will do, and initiatives we will launch,” Mash'al was quoted as saying by the news site.
"I need not say more than that these developments and changes around us with the curse of failure and standstill we have tasted and what Palestine suffers on all levels, we are forced to review the situation in Palestine beyond the headlines that some are trying to drown us in," he added.
"We in Hamas and the resistance factions and many of the respected Palestinian officials are keeping that in mind and will discuss our options. All of that will soon be before our people, who alone possess the cause, the legitimacy, the decision and the choice," he said.
Speaking earlier in the day from Damascus, Hamas leader Mousa Abi Marzuq told reporters that the Egyptian unity proposal was "no more valid after the fall of [Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak," and said it would not be used as a reconciliation tool without amendments.
The official reiterated Hamas objections to the calling of elections by the PA, calling the current government "illegitimate" and saying elections were "impossible given the state of division."
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