GAZA CITY — A meeting of Palestinian leaders in Gaza has reached a milestone reconciliation pact that will see rival Palestinian groups form a national consensus government in five weeks, after seven years of operating under separate administrations.

Under the agreement announced on Wednesday, April 23, rival groups Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad will form a government together under the umbrella of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).

The groups plan to form a national unity government in five weeks and will hold elections in six months.

At a news conference, leaders of all the groups said the past divisions had taken a toll on the Palestinian goal of establishing an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital.

Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader who announced the terms of the agreement, said the deal came as “the entire city of Jerusalem has been painted Jewish with an attempt to wipe out the Arab identity and desecrate the Muslim and Christian sanctities.”

Azzam al-Ahmed, the Fatah delegation head, said he hoped the pact “will be a true beginning for a true partnership in all our spectrums; political, social and societal.”

The Palestinian factions have been at odds and sometimes even at war with each other since 2007 – following Hamas’ democratic win in Gaza.

Since then, Hamas has independently ruled the 40-kilometer long Gaza strip, home to nearly 2 million Palestinians, while Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, from Fatah, governs occupied areas of the West Bank, home to more than 2 million Palestinians.

The two sides met and signed deals in 2011 and 2012 in meetings in Cairo and Doha, but the desired result of unification was not achieved.

The new agreement, reached in only two days, will honor the terms of both agreements.

The deal also comes at a crucial time when the U.S.-led talks between the Israelis and Palestinians are at a stalemate.

Some Palestinians, weathered by divisions in the past, said they remained skeptical of the new agreement.

Ramallah resident Nur Hamad, said she supported reconciliation “because we have to be one nation.”

“No factions, only a Palestinian nation, but I don’t think Fatah and Hamas are going to succeed,” Hamad said.

And Mariam abu Daqqa, an activist in Gaza said, “We are saying to both Fatah and Hamas for the sake of Palestine and the Palestinian children, you must get unified against the Israeli occupation.”

Hours after the agreement was signed, an Israeli warplane struck the northern Gaza Strip wounding six people.

Israel announced on Thursday that it will suspend the U.S.-sponsored peace talks in response to the unity pact. The negotiations had appeared to be heading nowhere before Palestinian factions signed the reconciliation agreement. 

Asked to clarify whether that meant the talks were now frozen or would be called off only after a unity government was formed, a senior Israeli official said, “They are currently suspended.”

In Washington, a U.S. official said the United States would have to reconsider its assistance to Abbas’s aid-dependent Palestinian Authority if the Western-backed leader and Hamas formed a government.

But UN Middle East envoy Robert Serry offered support for the Palestinian agreement after meeting Abbas on Thursday, saying in a statement it was “the only way to reunite the West Bank and Gaza under one legitimate Palestinian Authority.”