CAIRO: Egypt's military leadership will host Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas next week in a bid to strengthen Cairo's role as mediator between Fatah and Hamas, state news agency MENA said Saturday. “Egypt is intensifying its efforts on the Palestinian issue, particularly on the subject of reconciling Hamas and Fatah and finding an end to division between them,” said MENA. Abbas is due in the Egyptian capital Wednesday for talks the next day with Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and Egypt's de facto leader since the ouster of president Hosni Mubarak. Fatah and Hamas have been at loggerheads since 2007 when the Islamist movement took control of the Gaza Strip, routing Abbas loyalists. A process of reconciliation between the two is yet to yield any results. Egypt has been a long-standing mediator between the two factions as well as between Palestinians and Israelis. Israel asked the United Nations Friday to help prevent activists sailing to Gaza on the first anniversary of the bloody Israeli seizure of a Turkish ship that tried to reach the blockaded Palestinian enclave. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office quoted him telling UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that a mission of around 15 ships expected in late May “was being organised by extremist elements, among others, with the goal of creating a provocation and bringing about a flare
