THE Palestinian government held a cabinet meeting in Gaza yesterday — hailed by the UN envoy as vital to lifting the Israeli blockade on the Palestinian territory.

After meeting Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah in Gaza, UN Special Co-ordinator for the peace process Nickolay Mladenov said the development “should facilitate the lifting of the movement and access restrictions on Gaza.”

The meeting was the fruit of recent detente between President Mahmoud Abbas’s ruling Fatah party and Hamas, which took control of Gaza in 2007 after winning elections the previous year and has been engaged in a bitter feud with Fatah since that time.