It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, August 02, 2023
Gold Demand in India Seen Declining to Lowest Since 2020
Swansy Afonso Tue, August 1, 2023
(Bloomberg) -- Gold purchases in India this year are forecast to drop to the lowest since the Covid-19 pandemic hit the second-biggest consuming nation in 2020, with high domestic prices deterring buyers.
Indians are expected buy between 650 and 750 tons of the precious metal in 2023, said P.R. Somasundaram, the regional chief executive officer for India at the World Gold Council. The range is lower than the 774 tons bought last year and the least since the 446 tons purchased in 2020, according to the London-based group’s data.
“Looking ahead for rest of the year, we remain cautious about gold demand as it faces uncertainties due to elevated local prices and a slowdown in discretionary spending,” he said.
Gold is historically a popular investment in India, especially in rural areas where it can be difficult to access banking services. Consumers typically buy ornaments for marriage celebrations, and coins and bars for investment surge during a series of celebrations that culminates with Diwali, or the Festival of Lights, which this year falls in November.
“The success of the monsoon season could bolster sentiment ahead of Diwali season and throw positive surprises,” Somasundaram said.
India’s weakening gold consumption comes as buying by central banks around also slows. That’s contributed to bullion falling about 5% from this year’s peak in early May, although prices have rallied this month on signs the Federal Reserve’s tightening cycle may be nearing an end.
Benchmark gold futures in India surged to a record high in May and are up about 16% over the past year. Some investors have opted to book profits from these historic levels, boosting gold recycling by 61% on year during April-June to 37.6 tons, Somasundaram said.
Focusing on abandoned uranium mines across Navajo Nation, EPA opens Flagstaff office
by Adrian Skabelund (Arizona Daily Sun)
July 31, 2023
Tuesday saw the opening of a new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office in Flagstaff that will be largely focused on investigating and cleaning up hundreds of abandoned uranium mines across the Navajo Nation.
The office comes as the agency, in cooperation with local partners, works toward a goal of remediating 110 high-priority mines by 2030. As it opens, the office, which is located on the U.S. Geological Survey campus near Buffalo Park, will have a staff of at least 14 employees. That number could increase, according to office manager Jacob Phipps.
Of those, three of the remedial project managers are Navajo, although Elsa Johnson, the EPA community involvement specialist, said the agency would like to increase the number of Navajo EPA staff working on this project as well.
EPA Pacific Southwest Regional Administrator Martha Guzman said the office represents a commitment to the cleanup effort and an important step in that journey overall.
Coal Authority starts enforcement action against Ffos-y-Fran opencast mine operators
28 Jul 2023
Demonstration against mining at Ffos-y-Fran. Photo by Break Free from Fossil Fuels is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
Anthony Lewis
The Coal Authority has confirmed is taking action after discovering coal mining happening outside of the licence boundary at Ffos-y-Fran opencast mine in Merthyr Tydfil.
A recent inspection of the Ffos-y-Fran site by the Authority highlighted that the operator, Merthyr (South Wales) Ltd, is coaling outside of their licence boundary.
The Coal Authority said it has now commenced enforcement action to end mining in this wider area in line with its legislative powers.
It said that the operator must cease all extraction of coal outside of the licensed area and confirm in writing to the authority that all extraction of coal outside of the licensed area has ceased.
The authority said it is applying its enforcement powers and would seek such relief from the courts as is necessary.
Injunction
It said relief may be sought in the form of an injunction, preventing coal-mining operations from continuing, pending the plan and program having been agreed to bring all coal-mining operations outside of the licensed area to an end.
Planning permission for mining at the opencast mine ran out in September last year but residents and environmental campaigners claim mining has continued despite that.
An application to extend permission for mining at the site was rejected by the council’s planning committee in April and the council issued an enforcement notice on the company in June ordering them to stop coaling there. But campaigners say it has continued and called on Welsh Government to step in to stop it.
An appeal against the enforcement notice ordering the mining at the site to stop has been lodged by the company.
Local authorities
The Coal Authority said: “Local authorities are the primary authority for the regulation of surface mines, through planning permission and enforcement.
“Surface mine operators also require a coal mining licence from the Coal Authority and other relevant approvals from bodies such as Natural Resources Wales and the Health and Safety Executive.
“Ffos-y-Fran surface mine currently has a coal mining licence until February 2097. A recent inspection of the Ffos-y-Fran site by the Coal Authority has highlighted that the operator is coaling outside of their licence boundary.
“We have contacted the operator and begun enforcement action to end coaling in this wider area in line with our legislative powers. Further information can be found on our enforcement webpage.
“We will continue to provide advice and expertise to Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council, Welsh Government and other partners as needed.”
Merthyr (South Wales) Ltd confirmed that an appeal has been lodged with Welsh ministers against the enforcement notice from the council but added that it would not be appropriate to comment further whilst the appeal process is ongoing.
Welsh Government said it is unable to comment at this stage, as to do so may jeopardise any future decision Welsh ministers may have to make on the matter.
When 19-year-old Ann Bowcot from Dowlais was interviewed for the 1842 Children’s Employment report, she told the investigators that when she started work at the mines she was so small she had to be carried on her father’s shoulders to work.
She was not alone. It was common to see men carrying small children in the dark hours before dawn to the mine, where they would descend and remain most of the day.
Society was appalled, and demanded something be done.
The 1833 Factory Act had restricted the employment of children but why, people were asking, had this Act not been applied to other industries such as mining – so the government ordered an investigation.
As investigators studied the children, they were equally horrified to find women working underground close to men, in the dark, wearing little due to the heat and crowded space, smoking, swearing, and behaving like men, so the report was expanded to include women. The subsequent 1842 Act banned boys under ten and all females from working underground.
The ban however, did not start to take effect for several decades because there were so few inspectors that employers simply ignored the laws but finally, women were moved to the pit brow where they would pull and push the trams of coal, often the weight of a small car, off the pit head, empty it, break up large chunks of coal, clean and pack it ready for sale.
Other jobs included sweeping the roads of constant dust, or oiling trams that needed to be tipped over to get to the wheels and could result in injuries or death.
Grime
The Tip Girls as they were familiarly known in Wales, were covered in dust and grime, so for a touch of individuality they would wear colourful head scarfs to keep the dust from their hair or, a unique feature of the Welsh women, fancy hats decorated with feathers, buttons and bows and some even dared to wear trousers, something fiercely disapproved of by society.
Tredegar tip women
Critics came out in force and, rather like those on social media today, felt emboldened to criticise tip girls calling them unsexed, hideous hermaphrodites, or immoral and that they should get back to being domestic servants or factory workers, despite few of these jobs available in the valleys of south Wales.
Nevertheless, the critics continued, particularly as the publicity had turned the tip girls into visitor attractions and journalists, authors, photographers, sketch artists, or tourists would turn up to talk to or simply stare at the women.
Eventually MPs started asking questions in the House of Commons as to whether females should be allowed to continue in what society (mostly men) deemed highly inappropriate work – hardly anyone asked the women what they wanted.
All these attitudes came to a head in 1886 when the government announced they were preparing a new Mines Bill and would once again, consider banning women working in the coal and iron industries – people began to take sides.
In April a large and ‘enthusiastic meeting of colliers, labourers, women, and girls, employed in and about collieries, was held at the Temperance-hall, Tredegar, to protest against the proposed abolition or female labour at the pit’s mouth.’
The South Wales Echo reporting that one of the speakers (no women were allowed to speak) remarked that ‘there is no question that the work done by women and girls at the pit’s mouth is far healthier, more moral, and in every way superior to the work in which thousands of women and children are employed in cotton and kindred factories.’
They highlighted the difficulties that would be faced by ‘the large mass of widows and others who were now engaged about the collieries in employment they had followed from their childhood …
No other door would be open to then; except to the workhouse.’ The motion to support the women was carried unanimously.
Mine owners
As many MPs were mine owners, or had shares in mines, they voted to allow women to carry on working as they were often paid a fraction of men’s wages, but the criticism continued.
The women continued to fight back.
In 1887, the Pit Brow Lasses of Lancashire, joined by women from other mining districts, decided to march on Westminster to appeal directly to the Home Secretary to leave them alone and let them work in peace.
They marched through the streets of London in their working costumes, gawped at by the crowds who watched them, and once again, no ban was forthcoming. But in 1911 they had to do it all again, and marched on Westminster begging to be left alone.
The situation limped along in this manner until the introduction of new machinery which cut the number of working women, but they persevered through the First World War until the last woman finished in 1966.
The last Welsh woman was possibly Martha Richards who died aged 93 in 1974, the last woman to have worked in the Stepaside Pits, Pembrokeshire.
Women moved to supportive roles, caring, catering, and administrative, and occasionally posed as wives and family members in photos amid hordes of men until the late twentieth century when UK laws lifted many restrictions on women’s employment – but gender employment and pay gaps persist.
Following the Employment Act 1989, women are now allowed to work underground, but few do so.
Women in Welsh Coal Mining
Now for the first time, these remarkable women’s stories are told in my book Women in Welsh Coal Mining: Tip Girls at work in a men’s world (Pen and Sword Books, 2023).
Although women in Welsh coal mining were in a minority compared to men, their work was vital and it is important that we celebrate them and their determination to withstand the constant, but unfounded and unfair criticism.
Women’s history still lags a long way behind that of men, so we must keep uncovering and writing about them because at the end of the day it is not women’s history, it is simply history.
You can buy Women in Welsh Coal Mining: Tip Girls at work in a men’s world here…….
The Stainless-Steel Boom Is Tearing a South African Mining Region Apart
– by Kimon de Greef (Bloomberg News – July 24, 2023)
LONG READ PHOTO ESSAY
Areas with massive chrome ore deposits have become scarred, dystopian free-for-alls.
Twenty-five years ago, to get to school in the morning, Godfrey Molwana would walk 2 miles from his home in Witrandjie, a small village in South Africa. His route passed through communal grazing lands for cattle and goats—a rolling expanse of acacia trees and hardy shrubs, interspersed with the corn plots of subsistence farmers. Some families had graves on the land. “This area was for everyone,” Molwana recalled.
Close to the village lay the remains of a chrome mine, with derelict buildings and dumps of discarded ore where children from the community would play. Chrome is essential for manufacturing stainless steel. South Africa has the largest deposits in the world, but this mine, no longer profitable, had been shuttered for decades. Some older men in the community had worked there as laborers, earning the low wages designated for Black people during apartheid.
The ground beneath the village was rich, but its residents had remained in poverty, even after White rule ended in 1994. Then, in the mid-2000s, a new market for chrome arrived in Witrandjie (pronounced “VIT-rind-key”). It began with a company that purchased the old mine dumps and hauled them away for reprocessing.
Later, more outsiders showed up, promising lucrative payouts for villagers who allowed the establishment of new mines. Here, it appeared, was an opportunity to profit directly from mining, an industry that had contributed greatly to the dispossession of Black South Africans in the past. Excavators moved onto the grazing area, and cargo trucks departed with massive loads of ore.
Wall Street Is Gaming Out Global Spillover Threat From BOJ Shock
Michael Mackenzie and Katie Greifeld Tue, August 1, 2023
(Bloomberg) -- Seven years since Japan embarked on a highly unorthodox monetary experiment that helped pin down borrowing costs on Wall Street and beyond, the nation’s central bank is loosening its vice-like grip on domestic bond yields — with potentially profound consequences for high finance and households across the US.
Think higher interest rates for Corporate America, more expensive mortgages for home buyers and lower demand for risky assets including stocks, in the event that Japanese buyers bring their huge pools of overseas investments back home for higher returns.
“The key risk is a major asset allocation out of US financial markets and into Japanese financial markets, driven by higher yields on JGBs,” said Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management.
Any repatriation of capital could take months, if not years, to play out and so far global markets have taken the tentative shift toward higher borrowing costs in their stride. While the Bank of Japan has signaled it will let yields to trade toward 1% from roughly 0.5% now, its decision to step into the market on Monday suggests that won’t happen anytime soon.
Still, with domestic investors holding around $2.5 trillion of US stocks, bonds and credit, the very idea that Japan will one day join the developed world in retreating from zero rates has Wall Street sizing up a volatile fallout that could add fuel to the higher-for-longer interest rate era.
BlackRock Investment Institute, for one, says investors will now demand more to hold longer-dated government debt. That, in turn, threatens to ripple through the global economy, by hurting rate-sensitive market corners from highly leveraged currency trades to richly valued stocks.
Japan’s yield-curve control move back in 2016 capped the domestic 10-year yield, in order to help the nation escape decades of deflation and economic malaise. That, in turn, spurred domestic investors to bid up higher-returning assets overseas in a boost to global liquidity. A cheap Japanese yen also became a prime funding vehicle to back investments into higher-yielding currencies, especially in emerging markets.
Early signs suggest traders aren’t betting on a big repatriation of flows anytime soon, with the yen falling and shares of exporters rising in the aftermath of the BoJ’s move. But it’s early days yet.
Any pullback of flows into US Treasuries and company debt would be a big deal. Back in March, Deutsche Bank AG strategists estimated that a BOJ normalization scenario could spur a $600 billion rebalancing push into Japanese government bonds from domestic investors, among other transmission channels.
Japan remains the largest foreign holder of US Treasuries, at $1.1 trillion as of May, though rising hedging costs have diminished the relative appeal of the asset class of late. Meanwhile holdings of long-term US corporate debt have jumped to a record in April at $333 billion.
“The impact of the BoJ’s YCC tweak could be to add to the quantitative tightening which is taking place in the US and Europe,” said Peter Chatwell, head of global macro strategies trading at Mizuho International Plc.
“Japanese investor flows into foreign assets — government debt, liquid credit and equities — has, by the reckoning of my macro models, been a significant driver of lower term premia in govies, tighter credit premia in liquid credit and a lower equity risk premia,” he said.
Wall Street research suggests Japanese stimulus has helped reduce the so-called term premium in global bond markets. That’s the compensation investors receive for parking their money in, say, Treasuries over the coming decade relative to what they get for buying short-dated obligations.
For all the hand-wringing over big losses in developed global bonds since inflation broke the bull market, the premium for owning a 10-year US bond remains below zero, according to a widely followed model from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That looks harder to justify, if the likes of Japanese life insurance funds get to enjoy higher marginal yields at home.
A higher 10-year yield that aligns closer to Federal Reserve’s current overnight policy rate would constitute a material tightening of financial conditions, through higher borrowing costs for new home owners and corporations while testing buoyant valuations for frothy corners of stock and credit markets.
Not so fast, according to Vanguard Asset Management. The global asset manager expects an orderly and modest rise in 10-year JGB yields towards 0.7%, limiting cross-border spillovers. At the same time, Japanese bonds already pay more than the likes of European counterparts after hedging for currency risk, while any enduring hawkish shift in Tokyo could take years.
The BOJ tweaking “is not a game changer for global term premium yet,” said Roger Hallam, global head of rates at Vanguard Asset Management.
That’s not stopping bond bears just yet. A scenario whereby Japanese policymakers tighten in earnest if inflation gathers pace while their big-name peers also maintain a restrictive stance — a big if — would stoke market gyrations, according to Sonal Desai, chief investment officer for fixed income at Franklin Templeton.
“Absolutely it has an impact on US Treasuries, especially if the Fed is not in a position to start cutting,” the money manager told Bloomberg TV.
Then there’s the potential unwinding of so-called carry trades that leveraged trillions of yen at rock-bottom rates to finance higher-returning investments abroad.
“To the extent that the carry trade begins to unwind, the natural implication should be that of higher volatility in rates and currencies, both of which should put some pressure on the appetite for risk assets,” said Apollo’s Slok.
--With assistance from Liz Capo McCormick, Masaki Kondo, Ruth Carson and Cormac Mullen.
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UBS to Dispose of Risky Credit Suisse Loans to Asian Clients
Ambereen Choudhury, Marion Halftermeyer and Steven Arons Mon, July 31, 2023
(Bloomberg) -- UBS Group AG is planning to exit billions of dollars in loans to Credit Suisse’s clients in the Asia Pacific region, as the Swiss bank works to neutralize risks to its profitability and reputation from the defunct lender.
The bank intends to either wind-down or sell off the majority of Credit Suisse’s more complex and higher-risk structured loans in APAC, people familiar with the matter said.
Those riskier assets will be placed in the so-called “Non-Core Unit” for businesses that UBS doesn’t want, the people said, who asked not to be named discussing private details. The bank is likely to keep less complicated loans made against liquid collateral — so-called Lombard loans.
Since closing the takeover in June, UBS has been scrutinizing the approximately 75 billion Swiss franc ($86 billion) book of loans made to rich clients globally. At its peak in 2019, more than 45 billion francs in loans to wealthy customers in its Asia Pacific unit were outstanding. UBS agreed to buy Credit Suisse in March in an emergency deal brokered by the government, after a confidence crisis and a torrent of client outflows sent it hurtling toward bankruptcy.
About a quarter of Credit Suisse’s lending portfolio in its global wealth businesses is structured in nature, while about half of the book consists of lower-risk plain-vanilla Lombard loans.
The move is part of UBS’s broader efforts to make sure that the businesses it acquired from its stricken rival conform with its more conservative approach to risk. UBS has already said it plans to downsize Credit Suisse’s investment bank and put its bankers through a “culture filter” to weed out undesirable practices.
More details on what will go in the wind-down unit are expected during the combined bank’s second-quarter earnings on Aug. 31. UBS will wind down non-core assets in a way that also takes key relationships into account, a person familiar with the matter said. The process will also free up capital to use in other parts of the bank, the person added.
UBS declined to comment. UBS shares rose 0.1% to 19.275 Swiss francs in Zurich on Monday, having gained about 13.5% this year.
In scrutinizing the loan book of the fast-growing Asian market, UBS Chief Executive Officer Sergio Ermotti faces a dilemma — how to continue to build on the UBS’s presence there while shielding the bank from hidden risks. The lender’s strategy still hinges on growth plans in the Asia Pacific region, alongside the US, one of the people said.
The APAC loans marked for exit include those in countries or business lines that UBS doesn’t want a presence in, where probability of default is too high, or where the risk thresholds are higher than what it would normally allow, another of the people familiar said. It also includes some defaulted debt, the person added.
Prior to the UBS takeover, Credit Suisse had pursued a decade-long push into South East Asia, where it lent to billionaire business families.
That helped make Credit Suisse the go-to foreign bank for entrepreneurs, a status that could help boost UBS’s ambitions. Yet Credit Suisse’s client list in the region also includes individuals and companies that UBS may not want to do business with.
That set-up differed from Credit Suisse’s lending business to wealthy people in other parts of the world. In APAC, loans made to individuals and their businesses went hand-in-hand, and were more part of the same relationship with the bank than was common practice in other regions, people familiar said.
It was under former Credit Suisse chief executive Tidjane Thiam in 2015 that a business division was specifically created to more effectively target hungry entrepreneurs. These clients were seen as a potential source of fees not only for the private bankers managing their growing wealth but also investment bankers who could help arrange equity investments or loans to help their businesses grow.
As relationships with millionaires and billionaires in South East Asia deepened, Credit Suisse’s willingness to roll over and refinance debt rather than send defaulted loans to be worked out or restructured also increased, people familiar said. The bad-loan refinancing happened over many years and Credit Suisse benefited from the fees when rolling the loans over, the people said.
In certain instances, Credit Suisse allowed some Indonesian clients to only repay interest on defaulted debt rather than the total outstanding, and the bank would extend the maturity of the loan, two of the people said.
Credit Suisse began to unwind some of the more complicated and risky loans after the various scandals of the last two years forced the bank to revamp its approach to risk-taking. Some clients used to leniency from Credit Suisse are now likely to face insistence from UBS that loans be paid or collateral handed over as it tries to eliminate inherited risks.
--With assistance from Denise Wee, Cathy Chan, Chanyaporn Chanjaroen and Lucca de Paoli.
(Updates shares in eighth paragraph.)
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POSTMODERN STALINISM COLD WAR 2
China wants to mobilise entire nation in counter-espionage
Reuters Tue, August 1, 2023
BEIJING (Reuters) - China should encourage its citizens to join counter-espionage work, including creating channels for individuals to report suspicious activity as well as commending and rewarding them, the state security ministry said on Tuesday.
A system that makes it "normal" for the masses to participate in counter-espionage must be established, wrote the Ministry of State Security, the main agency overlooking foreign intelligence and anti-spying, in its first post on its WeChat account, which went live on Monday.
The call to popularise anti-spying work among the masses follows an expansion of China's counter-espionage law that took effect in July.
The law, which bans the transfer of information related to national security and interests which it does not specify, has alarmed the United States, saying foreign companies in China could be punished for regular business activities. - ADVERTISEMENT -
The revised law allows authorities carrying out an anti-espionage probe to gain access to data, electronic equipment, and information on personal property.
Political security is the top priority of national security, and the "core" of political security is the security of China's political system, Minister of State Security Chen Yixin wrote in an article in a Chinese legal magazine in July.
"The most fundamental is to safeguard the leadership and ruling position of the Communist Party of China and the socialist system with Chinese characteristics," Chen said.
In recent years, China has arrested and detained dozens of Chinese and foreign nationals on suspicion of espionage, including an executive at Japanese drugmaker Astellas Pharma in March.
Australian journalist Cheng Lei, accused by China for providing state secrets to another country, has been detained since September 2020.
China's declaration that it is under threat from spies comes as Western nations, most prominently the United States, accuse China of espionage and cyberattacks, a charge that Beijing has rejected.
The United States itself is the "empire of hacking," a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson has said.
In protecting itself from espionage, China would need the participation of its people in building a defence line, the state security ministry wrote in its WeChat post.
(Reporting by Ryan Woo; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
China’s new high-speed train just set a new record as the world’s fastest — and it could travel faster than an airplane
China’s super-fast maglev train could be operational within three to 10 years.
Becca Inglis Mon, July 31, 2023
It’s not often that a train can get you to your destination as fast as flying, but China’s new high-speed maglev train might just pull it off.
On a recent test run, the train sprinted to record-breaking speeds of 281 miles per hour, making it the fastest train in the world.
Once completed, engineers hope the maglev will reach 621 mph (much faster than commercial flights, which cruise at an average of 545 mph to 574 mph).
The maglev uses “magnetic levitation” to effectively glide on thin air, eliminating friction and noise pollution while allowing trains to travel at higher speeds.
It does this using superconducting magnets in a low-vacuum pipeline. Superconducting magnets are electromagnets that have been cooled to extreme temperatures, which strengthens the magnetic field.
Superconducting magnets on the train interact with metal on the walls of the pipeline to both levitate and propel the train forward, creating a cushion of air between the train and the track.
China already has one maglev train in operation in Shanghai, which connects Pudong Airport with the Longyang Road station in the city center. The 19-mile journey takes roughly seven minutes.
China plans to expand its maglev technology on railways across the country to ease travel between large cities and rural areas.
This goal is part of the China Railway 450 Technology Innovation Project, which was included in the country’s fourteenth five-year plan between 2021 and 2025.
By enabling greater connectivity across the country, the CR450 project will minimize travel times and costs for China’s vast population, while also reducing air pollution emissions from transport.
At the moment, transport emissions in China are rising. The number of passenger cars multiplied 12 times between 2005 and 2020, from 19 million to 239 million.
In 2018, the country was responsible for 11% of the world’s transport-related air pollution emissions (second only to the U.S.).
Decarbonizing China’s transport sector will play a key role in the nation’s plans to have its carbon emissions peak by 2030 and to become a carbon-neutral country by 2060.
Maglev trains do not generate any direct emissions, and they have the added benefit that they do not split the landscape. Unlike with highways and traditional train tracks, animals can cross safely underneath maglev railways.
China’s super-fast maglev train could be operational within three to 10 years.
Palestinian rivals form 'reconciliation committee' Adel Zaanoun Sun, July 30, 2023
WHAT NO ROUND TABLE?! Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas (C) meeting with a delegation of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine ahead of talks in El Alamein (Thaer GHANAIM)
Rival Palestinian political leaders meeting in Egypt decided on Sunday to form a committee on intra-Palestinian reconciliation, a move that one analyst doubted would end their 17-year rift.
President Mahmud Abbas and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh met for rare face-to-face talks in the coastal city of El Alamein along with representatives of most Palestinian political factions.
The latest attempt at reconciliation aims to bridge the gap between the parallel governments of Hamas in the blockaded Gaza Strip and of the Palestinian Authority -- controlled by Abbas's secularist Fatah movement -- which administers Palestinian-run areas of the occupied West Bank.
Abbas and Haniyeh were joined by the heads of other factions, except for the powerful Islamic Jihad and two other minor groups.
Islamic Jihad had made the release of prisoners held by PA security forces a condition for sending representatives to El Alamein.
Haniyeh earlier Sunday called on Abbas to end "security collaboration" with Israel and "political arrests", according to participants at the meeting.
The Hamas leader also said "a new, inclusive parliament must be formed on the basis of free democratic elections".
Hamas, which won the Palestinians' last legislative polls held in 2006, has repeatedly called for general elections.
Abbas said Sunday "the coup d'etat and the division that befell us after... must end," referring to clashes between Hamas and Fatah that followed the 2006 vote.
"We must return to a single state, a single system, a single law and a single legitimate army," Abbas added.
- 'Kill' unity -
To work towards this, the 87-year-old president announced "the formation of a committee to continue the dialogue... end divisions and achieve Palestinian national unity".
A later statement from Abbas said he "hopes for an upcoming meeting soon in Egypt to announce to our people the end" of the 17-year split "and the return to Palestinian national unity".
Palestinian political scientist Moukhaimer Abu Saada told AFP that the formation of the committee was no cause for celebration.
"The best way to kill something is to form a committee for it," he said, speaking from Gaza.
He said he doubted the move would produce any progress towards "ending the division or setting a date for Palestinian elections".
Echoing a sense of despair among Palestinians, one Facebook user wrote that the talks in El Alamein -- which means "two flags" in Arabic -- showed the impassable distance between Hamas and Fatah who "fly completely different flags".
On Sunday, Haniyeh called for "the restructuring of the Palestine Liberation Organization", the umbrella institution promoting Palestinian statehood. The PLO includes most Palestinian political factions, but not Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
The PLO is "the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people", Abbas said.
He called for "peaceful popular resistance", while Haniyeh touted "comprehensive resistance".
- Uptick in violence -
Khaled al-Batsh, an Islamic Jihad leader, said the group had "hoped for a response from Mahmud Abbas to grievances and calls for the release" of its members detained in the West Bank.
"We have been surprised by an unprecedented security incursion against resistance fighters," he said.
Sunday's meeting came amid a resurgence of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, particularly in the West Bank which Israel has occupied since the 1967.
Violence linked to the conflict this year has killed at least 203 Palestinians, 27 Israelis, one Ukrainian and one Italian, according to an AFP tally compiled from official sources from both sides.
The spike has coincided with the tenure of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's hard-right administration, which took office late last year and includes members with a history of anti-Palestinian rhetoric.
In the Gaza Strip on Sunday, hundreds of people demonstrated to demand an "end to division", said AFP correspondents in the coastal enclave.
In Lebanon's largest refugee camp for Palestinians, Ain al-Helweh in the southern port city of Sidon, fighting overnight and on Sunday killed five Fatah members and an Islamist fighter.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati called the fighting "suspicious in the current regional and international context", but Palestinian representatives in El Alamein did not comment on the clashes.
