GAZA, July 26 (Xinhua) -- Dozens of Palestinians, mostly young people, launched on Sunday a campaign to urge Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party and Hamas, ruler of the Gaza Strip, to achieve national reconciliation to confront the rising threat of the Israeli government.

At a press conference held in Gaza City, Alaa Hamouda, spokesman of the mass campaign, said restoration of the internal unity "will contribute to ending the Israeli blockade against the Palestinians and help us confront the Israeli threats against our cause."

"Israel and the U.S. are doing their best to end the Palestinian presence on our lands by expanding Israel's presence and implementing the Deal of the Century deal," he noted.

Hamas violently seized control of the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007, after weeks of fighting with Abbas' security forces.

Since then, an internal political and geographical division over administrative, financial and security issues has remained between the two sides despite a series of Arab and international mediations.

In March 2018, then Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah survived an explosion when his convoy entered Gaza, an incident that Abbas blamed on Hamas.

Despite a history of strife, Fatah and Hamas recently announced their agreement to put differences aside to confront Israeli plan to annex parts of the West Bank.

"What is happening now is a national unity that aims at confronting the Israeli annexation plan. It is not based on the unity of the Palestinian political ideology," Husam Dajany, a Gaza-based political expert, told Xinhua.

Reconciliation is a "compulsory corridor" between the two movements to confront the challenges that beset the Palestinian cause, including the Israeli annexation scheme, al-Dajany noted.

Mohammed Hamouda, one of the initiators of the campaign, expressed his hope to "unify Gaza and the West Bank to confront all Israeli threats."

"In the light of the U.S.-Israeli alliance, the Palestinian people and their cause are under the threat of being unable to establish an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital," the 35-year-old activist from Gaza city told Xinhua. Enditem

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