But the rival parties have yet to make a reconciliation agreement stick, after nearly two years of fierce division.
Mr Abbas for his part pointedly hosted a new pro-peace organisation of Israeli businessmen and public figures in Ramallah, the Palestinians' administrative capital, on April 28th, the day after the reconciliation agreement was announced.
"The two parties agreed to call on all Palestinian factions to implement the reconciliation agreement, " Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas' political bureau and a participant in the Cairo talks, told the AFP news agency.
He made clear that Palestinians have to answer some very legitimate and serious questions about how they move forward with negotiations, given the reconciliation agreement they had -- that the PA had with the -- with Hamas.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah president of the Palestinian Authority that controls the West Bank, recently declared that presidential and parliamentary elections will be held in January next year, unless Hamas, which controls Gaza, signs an Egyptian-brokered reconciliation agreement.
It also seems likely that the German government will not adequately resist such pressures, much as it sought to reopen the border issue with Poland a few short years ago after a bilateral reconciliation agreement had been concluded between Bonn and Warsaw.
That may help to explain why Mary Robinson's election in 1990 heralded a more liberal and less Catholic country while seven years later Mary McAleese's "bridge-building" theme foreshadowed what politicians south of the border believe was the reconciliation of the Good Friday Agreement a year later.
My years of preaching that what was being taught in Palestinian schools and broadcast on Palestinian television was the most important factor in building a true reconciliation between our two peoples was met with polite nods of agreement, yet little action.
CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: What Undid the Middle East 'Peace Process'
Meanwhile, the US government has reached internal agreement on a policy document that for the first time links reconciliation with the US military withdrawal in 2014.
The U.S. has been irritated too by the EU's agreement that Persson should make an official visit to North and South Korea seeking to aid the reconciliation process on the peninsula.
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