Algerian television last night broadcast a handshake that it described as "historic" between the president of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and the head of Hamas, Ismail Haniye. Their meeting in Algiers comes almost six years after their last public meeting, which took place in Qatar in 2016.
Dissolving the image of mutual confrontation, albeit temporarily and fictitious, represents a victory for the Algerian president, Abdelmayid Tebbun. This, since last year had redoubled his mediation efforts. Finally, the celebration of the 60th anniversary of Algeria's independence gave him the opportunity yesterday to bring them together. First in the same row, during the gigantic military parade - mostly Russian weapons - and then in private.
Relations between Fatah - an acronym for the Palestinian National Liberation Movement chaired by Abbas - and Hamas have been dismal since 2006, when the latter Islamist organization won the elections in Gaza and imposed the result by force. In this way, in practice, he separated it from the tutelage of the Palestinian National Authority, since then restricted to the puzzle of the West Bank.
The meeting, in which other representatives of both movements also participated, took place at the International Conference Center in Algiers. On the other hand, President Tebbun and his Palestinian counterpart signed a document baptizing a street in Ramallah with the name of Algeria. Israel's military occupation of most of its territory does not allow displays of sovereignty much greater than that.
It should be said that the photograph with the political leader of Hamas comes just a week before the scheduled meeting between Mahmoud Abbas and his American counterpart, Joe Biden, in Ramallah.
It also coincides with Palestinian disappointment over the State Department's ruling on the deadly shooting in May of legendary Palestinian-American Al Jazeera reporter Shirin Abu Akleh. According to Washington experts, although it is "probable" that the bullet came from Israeli army positions, its intention cannot be assured, apart from the fact that "the poor condition of the projectile prevents any definitive conclusion."
To this must be added the unease because the unprecedented dismissal to which Donald Trump subjected Palestine has barely been reversed by Biden.
Algeria, precisely, is preparing to host the next great summit of the Arab world, between November 1 and 2. In any case, the image of unity between Abbas and Haniye is nothing more than a snapshot. Among other things because the president, 87 years old and whose mandate has expired for more than a decade, once again ate his promise to hold elections in 2021.
Meanwhile, Israel is headed by an interim government, awaiting the autumn elections in which Beniamin Netanyahu hopes to take revenge. However, business as usual seems to have limits, judging by the two serious warnings in three weeks by Moscow about hitherto routine bombing raids by Israeli aircraft on supposedly Iranian targets in Syria. "They are unacceptable and must stop," the Kremlin spokeswoman said.
Finally, it should be said that Algeria celebrated this Tuesday the end of one hundred and thirty-two years of French occupation, which followed the Ottoman and Spanish occupations. During the French period, hundreds of thousands of Spaniards emigrated to Algeria - from Alicante, Murcia, Almería or Menorca - eventually outnumbering the French in the province of Oran, the second largest Algerian city.
After 1962, as the losing side of the war of independence, these people or their descendants had to pack their bags for France, as French citizens - the so-called pieds noirs. These formed, for decades, the safest electoral base of the National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen -on the Mediterranean coast- and today of his daughter Marine Le Pen.
