GAZA (Reuters) - Hamas, its Gaza Strip stronghold cut off by the new military-backed government in Egypt, called upon rival Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday to end their six-year schism and form a unity government.
Abbas's secular, U.S.-backed Fatah faction lost a 2006 ballot to Islamist Hamas. They sat in an uneasy alliance until a civil war the following year left Hamas ruling Gaza while Abbas's authority was limited to the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
