Hamas, Fatah Conclude Cairo Accord Ending Four Years of Political Division
Leaders of the Palestinian Authority and the Islamic Hamas movement concluded an agreement to end an almost four-year rift and establish a joint government, a move that Israeli leaders say will harm prospects for peace.
Mahmoud Abbas, the authority’s president and chief of its ruling Fatah faction, and Khalid Mashaal, head of the Hamas movement, were presented with a copy of the signed accord by Egyptian officials today. An alliance between the two groups ruptured in 2007, leaving Fatah in control of the West Bank and Hamas ruling Gaza.
“We have turned the page from this black internal division,” Abbas said at the ceremony. “We may differ, and we often do, but we still arrived at a minimum level of understanding.”
The reconciliation agreement follows a series of West Bank and Gaza rallies -- inspired by popular protests that led to the toppling of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Tunisian President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali -- in which Palestinians called for an end to the division. Abbas is asking foreign countries to recognize a Palestinian state and has said a united leadership will help achieve that goal.
“The people want unity even if that’s uncomfortable for Israel and the U.S.,” said Mkhaimer Abusada, a political scientist at Al Azhar University in Gaza City. “Among the lessons of the Arab spring is that it doesn’t work for the Palestinians to boycott or isolate Hamas.”
Joint Government
The accord calls for the establishment of a joint government in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and elections within a year. Fatah and Hamas reached an agreement on April 27 that paved the way for today’s ceremony. In 2007, Hamas ousted forces loyal to Abbas from Gaza a year after winning parliamentary elections.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left yesterday on a trip to Europe with a public appeal to Abbas not to sign, saying it would deal a “severe blow” to Middle East peace efforts. Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S., European Union and Israel.
The Israeli leader, who meets U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron today, will travel to Paris tomorrow for a meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy aimed at tempering European support for a Palestinian state, particularly one that contains Hamas, Netanyahu told his Cabinet May 1.
Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said that same day that Israel would withhold tax revenue collected on behalf of the Palestinians until it was certain the funds wouldn’t end up in the hands of Hamas. Hamas hasn’t participated in peace talks with the Jewish state, which it refuses to recognize.
The U.S. has said it might reconsider aid to the Palestinians should the reconciliation lead to a unity government that flouts conditions for a peace agreement with Israel, including its right to exist.
The Palestinian Authority is supposed to receive almost $600 million from the U.S. this year, according to the State Department. Hamas receives millions of dollars from Iran each year, according to Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar, who said in an interview last November that he brings much of the cash into Gaza inside his suitcase after diplomatic visits to Iran.
Abbas said last week that Fatah, which seeks a negotiated peace agreement with Israel leading to the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, will set the policy in any unity government with Hamas.
Cabinet Formed
“A Cabinet will be formed in the coming days,” chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said by telephone from Cairo. “The main thing is that the new Cabinet will have to stick to Palestine Liberation Organization commitments including the ones concerning Israel.”
Abbas said that Hamas won’t be asked to recognize Israel.
“We will form a technocratic government,” Abbas told reporters yesterday in Cairo. “Hamas does not need to recognize Israel.”
Negotiations between Abbas and Netanyahu fell apart last year after Israel refused to extend a partial 10-month construction freeze in Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Abbas has said he will resume negotiations only when all building is halted.
Serious Pressure
“Participation in the Palestinian government and the holding of elections will also create more serious pressure on Hamas to work for quiet in the Gaza Strip, which in turn can help advance the diplomatic process,” Shlomo Brom, head of the program on Israel-Palestinian relations at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies, said in a paper he circulated by e-mail on the agreement.
The unity agreement may be a step toward the Palestinian Authority seeking United Nations recognition of an independent state if negotiations with Israel, broken off last September, aren’t resumed.
France is considering recognition of a Palestinian state as “one of the options we are reflecting on with our European partners,” said French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero.
In a prelude to today’s ceremony, leaders of 11 Palestinian groups separately signed the Egypt-mediated accord between Hamas and Fatah.
To contact the reporters on this story: Jonathan Ferziger in Tel Aviv at at jferziger@bloomberg.net Saud Abu Ramadan in Cairo through the Jerusalem newsroom at sramadan@bloomberg.net;
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net
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