http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090805/wl_mideast_afp/mideastpalestinianpoliticssaudi
_20090805160418

RIYADH (AFP) – Saudi King Abdullah has told Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas that the split within the Palestinians’ ranks is more damaging to their cause of an independent state than the Israeli “enemy.”

In a letter to Abbas marking his Fatah party’s first congress in 20 years, the Saudi king stressed that all Palestinian factions need to come together to make an independent Palestinian state possible.

“The arrogant and criminal enemy was not able, during years of continued aggression, to hurt the Palestinian cause as much as the Palestinians hurt their cause themselves in the past few months,” Abdullah said in the letter released through the official SPA news agency late Tuesday.

“I can honestly tell you, brothers, that even if the whole world joins to found a Palestinian independent state, and if we have full support for that, this state would not be established as long as the Palestinians are divided.

“This letter from the holy land does not represent my sentiments alone but the sentiments of one thousand million Arabs and Muslims who see their greatest issue is the Palestinian issue.”

Saudi Arabia has in recent weeks come under criticism from Israel and some US officials for not doing enough to help restart peace talks between the Palestinians and Israelis.

But Riyadh maintains that Israel’s refusal to halt settlement expansion and evictions of Palestinians is the primary barrier to getting talks underway.

Fatah, which is at the helm of the Palestinian Authority, exercised undivided power among Palestinians before it was trounced by the rival Islamist Hamas movement in the 2006 legislative election.

Long-standing Hamas-Fatah tensions boiled over in June 2007 when the Islamists seized control of Gaza after a week of deadly street clashes, confining Abbas’s power base to the occupied West Bank.