South Africa has launched a new initiative aimed at encouraging Palestinian reconciliation by sharing its experience in overcoming Apartheid, officials said on Wednesday.

Pretoria's representative to the Palestinian Authority Ted Pekane announced the initiative, which will be carried out by Alex Boraine, the former deputy head of the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

That commission, which in the 1990s probed human rights violations committed during Apartheid, was widely credited with easing tensions and helping the country come to terms with its legacy of racial discrimination.

"I received an invitation from the South African embassy to come here to see the Palestinian factions and try to reach reconciliation with them," Boraine told reporters in the West Bank political capital Ramallah.

The two main Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, have been fiercely divided since Hamas seized power in Gaza in June 2007 in a week of bloody street battles, confining the Western-backed Palestinian Authority to the occupied West Bank.

"I have met with many people from Fatah during the last week and with a few Hamas leaders and some independents... All of them expressed that they want to see the South African experience," he said.

The secular Fatah and its Islamist rivals had planned to hold a second round of talks in Syria on Wednesday but the meeting was scrapped when Fatah requested a change of venue.

Egypt tried to mediate between the two rival factions for months but those efforts ground to a halt a year ago when Hamas refused to sign a unity deal endorsed by Cairo and Fatah.

Boraine said he had no intention of interfering with Cairo's mediation.

He said he had been denied Israeli permission to travel to Gaza for meetings with senior Hamas leaders there, adding that he hoped to meet with the Islamist movement's exiled leadership in Syria.

Since 2007, each side has accused the other of persecuting its members, and Palestinian and international human rights groups have been critical of both.