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Khalid Mishal, leader of the Islamist Hamas movement that rules Gaza, will head to Jordan on Sunday for the first official talks since a crackdown by Amman on the group more than a decade ago, Jordanian officials said yesterday.
They said the trip arranged with Qatari mediation reflected Jordan’s desire to normalise ties with the main Palestinian opposition group but not a shift away from stalwart support for the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas.
Jordan has normal ties with Israel and is a key ally of Hamas’s major rival, the secular Fatah movement, and its leader Abbas. Amman and the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, unlike Hamas, back a negotiated solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Jordanian officials said Mishal’s visit would herald a thaw in ties soured since the kingdom banned Hamas from its soil after a security clampdown in 1999.
Mishal, himself a Jordanian citizen, was deported that year along with several senior Hamas officials after accusations that the movement - which enjoys a strong following among the kingdom’s majority population of Palestinian origin - was engaged in activities harmful to Jordan’s national interests.
But Hamas has become a more important factor for Arab states since it seized control of the Gaza Strip from Palestinian Authority forces in 2007, and it now has its main headquarters in the small coastal territory blockaded by Israel.
Hamas also enjoys strong organisational and ideological ties with Jordan’s powerful Muslim Brotherhood and their political arm, the Islamic Action Front, the country’s largest opposition party.
Amman-based Islamist sources denied Mishal will discuss a reopening of Hamas offices in Amman despite growing speculation Hamas was planning to close its Damascus headquarters.
The group has been assessing the future of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is mired in a bloody 10-month-long uprising. Hamas has declined to hold rallies in Palestinian refugee camps in support of Assad, angering Damascus.
An official in the Gaza Strip said Mishal was also planning a trip to the coastal territory, possibly accompanied by Abbas.
Mishal “intends to come to Gaza and has a great desire to carry out such a visit, which could surprise us by happening very soon,” said Ahmed Yussef, an adviser to the Hamas ministry of foreign affairs in Gaza.