Fatah and Hamas Announce Outline of Deal

April 27, 2011
By ETHAN BRONNER and ISABEL KERSHNER

JERUSALEM — The two main Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, announced Wednesday that they were putting aside years of bitter rivalry to create an interim unity government and hold elections within a year, a surprise move that promised to reshape the diplomatic landscape of the Middle East.

The deal, brokered in secret talks by the caretaker Egyptian government, was announced at a news conference in Cairo where the two negotiators referred to each side as brothers and declared a new chapter in the Palestinian struggle for independence, hobbled in recent years by the split between the Fatah-run West Bank and Hamas-run Gaza.

It was the first tangible sign that the upheaval across the Arab world, especially the Egyptian revolution, was having an impact on the Palestinians, who have been losing faith in American-sponsored peace negotiations with Israel and seem now to be turning more to fellow Arabs. But the years of bitterness will not be easily overcome, and both sides warned of potential obstacles ahead.

Israel, feeling increasingly surrounded by unfriendly forces, denounced the unity deal as dooming future peace talks since Hamas seeks its destruction. “The Palestinian Authority has to choose between peace with Israel and peace with Hamas,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared in a televised statement. The Obama administration warned that Hamas was a terrorist organization unfit for peacemaking.

The deal brings with it the risk of alienating the Western support that the Palestinian Authority has enjoyed. Azzam al-Ahmad, the Fatah negotiator, said that Salam Fayyad, the prime minister in the West Bank who is despised by Hamas, would not be part of the interim government. It is partly because of Mr. Fayyad, and the trust he inspires in Washington, that hundreds of millions of dollars are provided annually to the Palestinian Authority by Congress. Without that aid, the Palestinian Authority would face great difficulties.

The announcement was sure to fuel a debate on whether Mr. Netanyahu had done enough in his two years in power to forge a deal with the Palestinian Authority led by President Mahmoud Abbas and Mr. Fayyad, widely considered the most moderate leaders the Palestinians have ever had.

The deal also highlighted Egypt’s evolving foreign policy, its increasing regional influence and the challenges that posed for Israel. The new Egyptian government pursued Palestinian negotiations aggressively; has recognized the Muslim Brotherhood, which has deep ties to Hamas; and is reconsidering a natural gas deal with Israel.

Relations between Fatah, the mainstream secularist movement led by Mr. Abbas, and Hamas, the Islamic militant group, have deteriorated since Hamas won parliamentary elections in 2006. They ruptured a year later when Hamas seized full control of Gaza, the coastal enclave, after a brief factional war, routing Fatah forces there and limiting the influence of Mr. Abbas and his Palestinian Authority to the West Bank.

A desire for unity has been one goal that ordinary Palestinians in both areas have consistently said they sought. Until now it has proved elusive and leaders of the two factions have spoken of each other in vicious terms and jailed each other’s activists.

But with the Palestinians seeking international recognition of statehood at the United Nations by September, Mr. Abbas has repeatedly said that unity must be restored for a credible case to be made. Other recent developments also played a role.

As Mr. Ahmad said after the news conference in Cairo: “The changes in the Arab region and the political upheaval contributed to reducing the pressure on the Palestinian factions, and by pressure I mean the negative kind of pressure.” He said that he was referring to “the changing rules of the game in the region.”

Mkhaimar Abusada, a professor of political science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, said that the Palestinian Authority’s failure to reach an agreement with Israel and the anger following an American veto of a United Nations Security Council resolution against Israeli settlement construction in February encouraged Fatah to come to an agreement with Hamas. The Islamic group, he said, was motivated to get closer to Fatah by regional changes, especially the protests in Syria, where Hamas’s politburo is based. If President Bashar al-Assad of Syria were to fall, Hamas might no longer be able to use Syria as a base or enjoy the protection, money and arms the country has extended.

“We have ended a painful period in the history of the Palestinian people where Palestinian division had prevailed,” Moussa Abu Marzouk, a representative of Hamas who negotiated the deal, said at the Cairo news conference. “We gave the occupation a great opportunity to expand the settlements because of this division. Today we turn this page and open a new page.”

When he spoke at the news conference, Mr. Ahmad of Fatah recalled the chants of young Palestinian demonstrators mimicking the Tunisian and Egyptian chants: “The people want to bring down the regime.”

“To all the Palestinian youth who went out saying, ‘The people want to end the division’ and ‘The people want to end the occupation,’ we say what you demanded was achieved today,” he said, adding that the period of division had taught both sides “a hard lesson in confronting the occupation.”

He said that Israeli officials had warned Mr. Abbas not to collaborate with Hamas but that “he did not heed the warning, and he responded, ‘Yes, we want Hamas.’ ”

The Fatah-led Palestinian Authority has negotiated for a two-state solution with Israel, whereas Hamas says Israel has no right to exist and continues to fire rockets at Israeli towns.

The Palestinian negotiators offered few details of the proposed transitional unity government, saying that it would be composed of neutral professionals and that the leaders of each side would work out details. All the Palestinian factions are to meet next week to sign the agreement.

Mahmoud al-Zahar, a Hamas leader, told Al Jazeera Television from Cairo the sides had agreed to changes in the interim leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization, a tribunal for elections and a date for the elections. The P.L.O. excludes Hamas, which has long sought entry.

Hamas and Fatah will together nominate members of the technocratic government and a 12-judge election tribunal. He also said that an agreement was reached to set up an oversight committee to regulate security.

In November, officials from the two movements met in Damascus but failed to reach an agreement because of differences on security. It seemed likely that Fatah security forces, which work closely with the Israeli Army, would continue to rule in the West Bank, and that Hamas security would continue in Gaza with a tacit agreement not to arrest each other’s activists.

The last round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks broke down soon after they started last September when an Israeli moratorium on construction in West Bank settlements expired. The international powers have been working to get the sides to resume negotiations, and Mr. Netanyahu has recently been considering making an offer to the Palestinian Authority to try to pre-empt a United Nations vote. He is due to address a joint session of Congress in a month.

But with this latest shift in Palestinian politics, Mr. Netanyahu may also shift tactics. “I think the very idea of the reconciliation shows the weakness of the Palestinian Authority, and leads one to wonder whether Hamas will take control over Judea and Samaria, as it did over Gaza,” he said in his statement, using the biblical names for the West Bank.

Earlier Wednesday, Mr. Netanyahu instructed the Israeli security establishment to take all necessary measures to ensure the enforcement of Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza amid reports of plans for another international flotilla. Mr. Netanyahu met with his senior ministers and security officials and said that diplomatic efforts should continue to prevent the flotilla from setting out.

Last May, Israeli naval commandos raided a flotilla trying to breach the blockade of Gaza and killed nine pro-Palestinian activists on a Turkish vessel after violence broke out. The episode stirred international outrage and caused a crisis in relations between Israel and Turkey.

Source: The New York Times

Worlds apart

Saleh Al-Naami

September 11, 2009

While Cairo issues its ultimatum for inter-Palestinian reconciliation, Ismail Haniyeh speaks to Saleh Al-Naami in Gaza about the role of Hamas in the upcoming elections

"A recipe for separation." These were the words Ismail Haniyeh used to describe the plan to hold Palestinian legislative and presidential elections on 25 January. Earlier, Mahmoud Abbas said that the elections would go ahead even if Hamas refused to take part. Al-Ahram Weekly met Haniyeh in Gaza last week and heard that elections should be a two-way street.

"Although elections are the only way to rotate power, we believe that certain guarantees should be met in order for elections to go ahead in a healthy manner. A minimum of requisites should be met in order to avert a repetition of the recent elections, when everyone made a point of punishing the Palestinian people for their democratic choice." There is no guarantee that fair elections can be held under the present circumstances, Haniyeh stated.

"What kind of elections are they talking about at a time when the leaders and activists of Hamas are being detained by the security forces of [Prime Minister] Fayyad and Israel? How can elections be held under repression and fear?" he asked.

Haniyeh warned of holding the elections in the West Bank alone, describing the move as a "national crime". Certain people, some of them Palestinians, are acting with "no regard" for the national interests of the people, he remarked. However, he admitted that certain leaders in Fatah, as well as some Arab governments, are trying to dissuade the PA from going solo with the elections.

"There are some people who are trying to use the sessions of [inter-Palestinian] dialogue to trick the Palestinians... They think that they can outsmart the Palestinian people and their leaders. They think they can do things to harm the Palestinian national cause. But they are quite mistaken," Haniyeh stated.

The Gaza-based prime minister lashed out at what he called the "selectiveness and double standards" of those who want to hold legislative and presidential elections without the consent of Hamas. "Fatah and Hamas, as well as the rest of Palestinian factions, have agreed to restructure the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organisation] on a sound basis. We have agreed to hold new elections for the Palestinian National Council. We have agreed to re-elect the leaders of the PLO. Why are they not interested in holding the National Council elections?" Haniyeh said that the holding of elections for the National Council was a "primary condition" for rehabilitating the PLO.

Haniyeh, who has a reputation of being a level-headed man who shuns wild impulses, told the Weekly that the urge to hold presidential and legislative elections in January is related to the initiative US President Barack Obama intends to launch during UN General Assembly meetings this month. According to Haniyeh, the plan Obama is likely to propose subscribes fully to the Israeli point of view.

Haniyeh called on the Obama administration to distance itself from the Israeli vision of a solution. He said that the Obama administration must "through deeds and not just words introduce the changes it had promised in international relations. No US initiative to settle the conflict can succeed if it were based on Zionist views and guided by Israel's compass." Washington's belief that a temporary halt of settlement building should be rewarded by normalisation is unfortunate, he adds. Indeed, it is a sign that the Obama administration is not serious about resolving the conflict in an objective manner.

Haniyeh said that the restoration of domestic Palestinian unity is essential in the face of Israeli measures in Jerusalem. He added that Jerusalem is coming under brutal attempts to move settlers into it and "Judaise" it. The Hamas leader said that his government would not approve of any arrangement that squanders Palestinian national rights on Jerusalem. Hamas will not endorse any political solution that excludes Jerusalem.

With regards to Gaza, Haniyeh said that the ongoing blockade aims at forcing his government to its knees to make it turn a blind eye to flawed political settlements. "We intend to disappoint all those who want to force us, through blockade, to make political concessions. This is why my government places reconstruction at the top of its agenda, for we have to repair the destruction caused by the [Israeli] aggression."

Haniyeh said that the conference held lately in Istanbul to discuss the means of reconstructing Gaza has managed to collect $0.5 billion, which is now held in a special fund in Turkey. Haniyeh said he called Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and asked him to intercede with Turkey's friends, including Israel, to make sure that the funds reach Gaza.

Finding money is not the main problem, Haniyeh said. The biggest obstacle to reconstruction is the continued closure of crossing points. Haniyeh said that Israel is not interested in rehabilitating Gaza. In fact, it is trying to use the destruction it caused as leverage through which to blackmail his government and the resistance into making political concessions.

Meanwhile, a key figure of the PLO has voiced support for Hamas on the matter of elections. Asaad Abdel-Rahman, member of the PLO Executive Committee, said that the PLO would not be "complete" without representatives of both Hamas and the Islamic Jihad joining its ranks.

Abdel-Rahman wants the Palestinian National Council to be re-elected through proportional representation. Voting for the council should take place not only in Gaza and the West Bank, but outside Palestine as well. The signing of the Oslo Accords was the seed from which Palestinian dissent has grown, he said. Since signing, the Oslo Accords have served to divide the Palestinians and stunt their representative institutions.

At the moment, Abdel-Rahman admitted, both the PLO Executive Committee and the Palestinian National Council are of questionable legitimacy. "We need to reform both institutions in order to restore legitimacy and unity."

The Weekly has learned that representatives of the Egyptian government are currently drafting proposals to address all unresolved issues involving Hamas and Fatah, such as elections and political detentions. According to well-informed Palestinian sources, the Egyptian government intends to invite all Palestinian factions to a dialogue after Eid Al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of Ramadan. Egyptian officials have told both Abbas and Khaled Mashaal, chief of the Hamas political bureau, that the next meeting should be decisive. If it fails, all attempts at mediation would be abandoned.

Hamas and several Palestinian factions have previously rejected proposals made by Egypt, some accusing Cairo of taking sides with Abbas. For now, all signs indicate that Hamas and Fatah are on a collision course. Abbas and his supporters are hoping that Hamas will crumble under the weight of the siege. And Hamas is hoping that Fatah will become popularly discredited. As things stand, the gap between the two biggest Palestinian groups appears unbridgeable.