GAZA CITY, Palestine 

Palestinian resistance factions on Monday condemned a recent meeting between President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz.

Abbas on Sunday held talks with Gantz in the West Bank city of Ramallah, in the first official meeting between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Israeli government since 2014.

Such meetings “will deepen the Palestinian division and complicate the Palestinian situation,” Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said in a statement.

He said Sunday’s meeting “was a continuation of the PA delusion of the possibility of achieving something to our people through the failed settlement path”.

Islamic Jihad spokesman Tareq Selmi described Abbas-Gantz meeting as a “stab”.

The meeting “came at a time when the Israeli forces are continuing their attacks on Gaza and maintaining its years-long blockade on the territory,” he said.

"The blood of [Palestinian] children killed by the [Israeli] occupation army upon orders from Gantz is still on the ground and has not dried yet," Selmi said.

Writing by Ahmed Asmar in Ankara