Thursday, April 28, 2011

Fatah and Hamas Announce Outline of Deal

Hi. There’s now been a joint news conference announcing the

actual formation on the new entity.  Today’s Democracy Now

interviews UCLA Prof. Saree Makdese on the issue.  He brings

up the major problems facing a Palestinian government in an

occupied land, and the many issues of over half of Palestinians

living in exile.  Nonetheless, it’s an important development.

Ed

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/world/middleeast/28mideast.html

 

Fatah and Hamas Announce Outline of Deal

 

By Isabel Kershner

NY Times: April 27, 2011

 

JERUSALEM — Fatah and Hamas, the rival Palestinian movements, announced an

agreement in principle on Wednesday to end the years-long internal

Palestinian schism.

 

Taher Al-Nounou, a spokesman for the Hamas government in Gaza, said the two

sides had reached a preliminary agreement to form a transitional unity

government for the Palestinian territories to be followed by new elections

after a year. He said the leaders of Fatah and Hamas are expected to meet

within a week to sign a formal agreement.

 

At a press conference to announce the deal in Cairo, the Palestinian

negotiators offered few details of the proposed transitional government,

saying it would be composed of neutral professionals and that the leaders of

each side would work out the details.

 

While the deal, reached after secret Egyptian-brokered talks, promised a

potentially historic reconciliation for the Palestinians, Israel warned that

a formal agreement would spell the end of the Israeli-Palestinian peace

process.

 

In a televised address on Wednesday, even before the Fatah-Hamas press

conference, the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, sent a stern

warning to the Palestinian Authority president and Fatah chief, Mahmoud

Abbas.

 

“The Palestinian Authority has to choose between peace with Israel and peace

with Hamas,” Mr. Netanyahu said, adding, “Peace with both of them is

impossible, because Hamas aspires to destroy the state of Israel and says so

openly.”

 

The choice, he said, was in the authority’s hands.

 

The news comes as the so-called Arab Spring has shaken the Middle East,

leading to the demise of two longtime autocrats and raising new fears in

Israel about its alliances and security. Especially alarming to Israel was

the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, which has a peace agreement

with Israel.

 

Relations between Fatah, the mainstream secularist movement led by the

Palestinian president, 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 the Gaza Strip, the

Palestinian 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.

 

Asked why the deadlocked talks had come back to life, Mr. Nounou said, “The

will was there for everyone.” He also credited the new mediators from Egypt,

put in place after that country’s revolution, with “an exemplary

performance,” including weeks of courtship at private meetings with each

side before they met face to face with each other for the first time today.

 

The tentative deal is the first sign that the recent upheaval in the region,

and specifically the Egyptian revolution, has reshuffled regional diplomacy.

Previously, efforts to reconcile the two Palestinian factions fell under the

jurisdiction of Mr. Mubarak’s right-hand man, Omar Suleiman. Although he

talked to both sides, he and the Egyptian government were considered openly

hostile to the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is an offshoot, and deeply

committed to Egypt’s alliance with Israel.

 

Mkhaimar Abusada, a professor of political science at Gaza’s Al-Azhar

University, said that the Palestinian Authority’s failure to reach an

agreement with Israel and the disappointment following the American veto of

a United Nations Security Council resolution against Israeli settlement

construction in February encouraged Mr. Abbas’s Fatah party to come to an

agreement with Hamas. The Islamic group was motivated by changes in the

region, especially the revolt in Syria, where Hamas’s politburo is based, to

get closer to Fatah, he said.

 

The agreement appeared to catch the Obama administration, like many others,

by surprise. Tommy Vietor, the spokesman for the National Security Council,

said that the administration was seeking more information about the

agreement and its terms, but sharply warned that it considered Hamas a

terrorist organization that would not be a reliable partner in peace talks

with Israel.

 

“As we have said before, the United States supports Palestinian

reconciliation on terms which promote the cause of peace,” Mr. Vietor said.

“Hamas, however, is a terrorist organization which targets civilians.”

 

He added that any Palestinian government had to accept certain principles

announced by international negotiators, including renouncing violence,

abiding by past agreements with the Israelis and recognizing Israel’s right

to exist. Hamas has never agreed to those conditions.

 

Before the press conference, Palestinian officials said Hamas and Fatah

agreed on three main issues that had thwarted previous rounds of talks aimed

at reaching a national reconciliation.

 

Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas leader, told Al-Jazeera from Cairo that the issues

included the interim leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization,

the Palestinian umbrella organization from which Hamas has so far been

excluded; a tribunal for elections; and a deadline for elections. Mr. Zahar

said they were to be held within a year of the signing of the final

agreement, which is expected to take place in Cairo next week.

 

Mr. Zahar added that Hamas and Fatah would together nominate the members of

the technocratic government and of the 12-judge elections’ tribunal.

 

 He also said that an agreement was reached on another contentious issue,

control of the security services, but he did not elaborate. In November,

officials from the two movements met in Damascus but failed to reach an

agreement due to differences on security.

 

Mr. Abbas has been pressing in recent months for reconciliation, under

popular pressure for national unity and ahead of plans to seek international

recognition of Palestinian statehood at the United Nations this fall.

 

Successive rounds of Egyptian-brokered talks between the rival parties have

failed in past years. Last month, Mr. Abbas said that he was ready to go to

Gaza and meet with Ismail Haniya, the leader of the Hamas government, who

had already invited Mr. Abbas and Fatah to resume unity talks.

 

The last round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks broke down soon after they

started last September when a temporary 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 some kind of offer to the Palestinian Authority to try to

preempt a United Nations vote, according to Israeli officials.

 

But Mr. Netanyahu made it clear on Wednesday that he would not deal with Mr.

Abbas and the Palestinian Authority if it took the route of national unity

with Hamas.

 

Hamas, Mr. Netanyahu said, “Fires rockets at our cities and anti-tank

missiles at our children,” referring to a recent attack by Hamas militants

on a school bus in Israel that killed a 16-year-old Israeli youth.

 

“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,” Mr. Netanyahu added,

using the biblical name for the West Bank.

 

Earlier Wednesday, Mr. Netanyahu instructed the Israeli military and

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 this spring. Mr. Netanyahu met with his

senior ministers and security officials and said that diplomatic efforts

should continue to prevent the flotilla from setting out, and that the

blockade was necessary to prevent weapons from being smuggled to militant

organizations in Gaza.

 

Last May, Israeli naval commandos raided a flotilla that was trying to

breach the naval blockade of Gaza and killed nine pro-Palestinian activists

on a Turkish vessel after violent confrontations broke out. The incident

stirred international outrage and caused a crisis in relations between

Israel and Turkey, a longtime regional ally.

 

David D. Kirkpatrick and Mona El-Naggar contributed reporting from Cairo,

Fares Akram from Gaza and Steven Lee Myers from Washington.

 

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