‘Not conducive to establishing a Palestinian state’

The Hamas-Fateh agreement signed on April 23 will not be conducive to establishing a Palestinian state or realising the aspirations of the people.

Having the Islamic Jihad as part of a new arrangement to revitalise the Palestine Liberation Organisation signifies inviting Iran to impose its hardline policies on any future development to solve the thorny issue of Jerusalem.

Hamas’ political platform does not reconcile with Fateh’s, which believes in a two-state solution, negotiation with Israel, compromise on the maximalist demands of some factions whose slogan is “liberation from the river to the sea”, resorting to armed resistance and suicide operations.

Fateh cannot moderate the hardline adopted by Hamas, and Hamas cannot radicalise Fateh and make it follow the stratagem of armed resistance or more confrontational, violent positions with the Israelis.

Fateh and Hamas signed the agreement coerced by the total despair of their people. 

Hamas lost the financial and logistic support of Iran. It could not recover from the heavy blow Cairo had dealt with the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood, its mother organisation, and the restrictions imposed by the new regime.

The hope the movement had that Ankara and Doha will bail it out failed due to domestic and regional factors.

Fateh is in the throes of the same agonising despair since US Secretary of State John Kerry abruptly ended his mediation efforts to bring about a comprehensive two-state solution that would establish a just, durable peace in the region, solve the refugee problem and the question of Jerusalem, delineate the borders between the two states and reach a land swapping deal.

Fateh’s higher echelons realised that they cannot afford to pay the monthly salaries of their employees in Gaza and the West Bank.

In case general parliamentary and presidential elections, which have been due for several months now, take place in a transparent and honest way, the man in the street will not opt for Fateh or Hamas, since both sides managed public affairs incompetently, financially, politically and diplomatically.

When Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas refused Kerry’s request to extend time for the framework beyond April 29, and suspended the talks three weeks ago, he actually granted the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his hardline ministers Naftali Bennet and Avigdor Lieberman what they had always hoped for: a valid reason to stop talks and build more settlements, or to drag negotiations ad infinitum, the way former prime minister Yitzhak Shamir advised his negotiation team years ago.

It was the United States’ pressure on Tel Aviv that forced Israel to talk and negotiate with the Arabs, since the occupation of Jerusalem in the 1967 war.

Palestinians in Gaza and Ramallah are celebrating now an end to their nation’s schism, just as they celebrated in 2007 the Mecca accord between Fateh and Hamas, and the 2008 Doha accord between Hamas’ leader Khaled Mishaal and Abbas, all of which proved to be no more than a mirage.