With smaller Palestinian factions’ signatures, Fatah and Hamas formally ended a four-year conflict on Wednesday. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas’s Syria-based leader Khaled Mashaal were present in Cairo, and Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank celebrated by raising Palestinian, Hamas, Fatah and Egyptian flags.
The Ramallah-based website, Palestine Monitor, claimed to have the text of the reconciliation deal:
So, according to this, both parties agree on elections in a year, cooperation with the Palestine Liberation Organization, in which Hamas will be brought into both the Executive Committee and in the National Council, and the formation of a Higher Security Committee of professional officers.
The interim government will maintain the provisions of the Palestinian National Accord signed in 2009 (rebuilding the PLO, holding new Parliamentary and Presidential elections, and reconstructing the Palestinian security forces), prepare for elections, reconstruct Gaza, and moderate and reunify institutions.
This deal says nothing regarding the future of agreements signed between the PLO and Israel. That issue is left in abeyance, given that both parties want no confrontation in this transitional period.
It is clear that Abbas finally took the initiative after a series of ineffective attempts and waiting periods in the talks with Israel. Ramallah now has two offensive strategies: the UN declaration of an independent Palestinian state based on pre-1967 war borders with East Jerusalem as the capital and substantive Israeli concessions before September. Abbas is declaring for the last time: “Israel is using the Palestinian reconciliation as an excuse to evade a peace deal. Israel must choose between peace and settlement."
And that peace can no longer be on the lines of the talks up to spring 2011. A Fatah official, Nabil Shaath, said that “the old rules of the Quartet (US, UN, European Union, Russia) were not logical, and are not workable”.
So given the apparent Fatah-Hamas reconcilation, what can Israel do? The Israeli Foreign Ministry which calls the deal an “opportunity”, but not for talks with a unified Palestinian leadership. Instead, it advised the government to adopt a "constructive approach that would sharpen the dilemma on the Palestinian side" over aims and Hamas' supposed opposition to recognition of Israel.
In other words: play Fatah against Hamas with an offer the former cannot refuse.
Meanwhile, Israeli officials shook fists. Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz threatened to withhold taxes collected by Israel on behalf of the Palestinian National Authority. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the agreement a “mortal blow to peace” and reiterated his call to Abbas: “Choose between peace with Israel or peace with Hamas.”
The head of Israel's domestic intelligence service Shin Bet, Yuval Diskin remained confident that the deal will not work out in practice since each side is unwilling to let the other operate in their area. Supposed indicators were the claimed arrest of four Hamas activists in the West Bank on Wednesday, the freeze of PA tax refunds, and Hamas’s likely demand for the departure of West Bank Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
But Hamas, enjoying a better deal than that proposed in 2009, it is signalling a more flexible position on the issue of peace with Israel. Although senior official Mahmoud Zahar said that the organisation will never recognize Israel, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, pointed to a different approach as the deal was reached on Wednesday:
We have given peace since Madrid till now 20 years, and I say we are ready to agree among us Palestinians and with Arab support to give an additional chance. But, dear brothers, because Israel does not respect us, and because Israel has rejected all our initiatives and because Israel deliberately rejects Palestinian rights, rejects Fatah members as well as Hamas...it wants the land, security and claims to want peace.
Our aim is to establish a free and completely sovereign Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, whose capital is Jerusalem, without any settlers and without giving up a single inch of land and without giving up on the right of return.
In other words, if those conditions are met, a two-state peace deal is possible.
On Thursday, Meshaal said that he is fully committed to working for a two-state solution and added:
If occupation ends, resistance ends. If Israel stops firing, we stop firing. Where there is occupation and settlement, there is a right to resistance. Israel is the aggressor. But resistance is a means, not an end.
Facing the prospect of a Palestinian approach based on willingness to recognise Israel and the UN vote on an independent Palestinian state, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has started lobbying European leaders. He had partial success: Prime Minister David Cameron assured his guest on Britain’s commitment to Israel’s security but added there was an opportunity to “push forward the process of peace between Israel and Palestine”. French President Nicolas Sarkozy was more accommodating: “If the peace process is still dead in September, France will face up to its responsibilities on the central question of recognition of a Palestinian state.”
Washington is still preferring to watch from a distance: White House spokesman Jay Carney said the US expected to receive a document from the Palestinians detailing each and every point in the unity agreement. He also added that Palestinians were expected to stick to the principles of peace.
After his meeting with Sarkozy, Netanyahu adjusted and said that Israel could support a Palestinian state before September under the right conditions:
The expectation we have, and any fair minded person would have, is that we ask of anyone who says they want peace with Israel to abandon the goal of destroying Israel. We can make peace with an enemy but only an enemy who wants peace.
I don’t want to talk about the details of the talks…but the main principle is that whoever wants peace with Israel has to accept Israel as the national state of the Jews. That is the most simple and true thing.