Excerpt
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.
THEN.....
"Palestinian Factions Give Differing Views of Unity Pact" by ETHAN BRONNER, New York Times 4/28/2011
Excerpts
A day after the two main Palestinian factions announced surprise plans for a unity government, the challenge of bringing together two rival parties with distinct ideologies burst into view, with each side presenting a different picture of what the accord means and what produced it.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, said Thursday that because he was also chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization he remained in charge of peace efforts with Israel. The future unity government, he said, will have only two functions, to rebuild Gaza and set up elections within a year.
“The new government and peace talks are two different things,” Mr. Abbas told a group of Israelis who signed what they called the Israeli Peace Initiative this month and were invited to his headquarters for lunch. He said no activists of either his party, Fatah, or of the Islamists of Hamas would serve in the new government.
He added that negotiations with Israel were his preferred path to statehood rather than recognition from the United Nations, which he is also pursuing. But he repeated that for negotiations to begin, he needed a moratorium in Israeli settlement building in the West Bank, a condition that Israel rejects.
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Hamas figures presented a different picture of what led to the accord. They focused on Mr. Abbas’s frustrations with Israel and the United States in failed peace efforts and said that Fatah was therefore heading more in the direction of Hamas.
“There are no negotiations now, so let’s not speak about illusions that may or may not happen,” Taher al-Nounou, a Hamas spokesman, said when told of Mr. Abbas’s comments. “The Israeli government has nothing to offer to the Palestinians. It even refused to freeze settlements.” But he said that Hamas would abide by any P.L.O. negotiations and that it expected the P.L.O. to be reconfigured after elections in a year.
Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas leader who was in Cairo for the Egyptian-brokered Palestinian negotiations, said he saw no place for peace talks with Israel under the new arrangement.
“Our program does not include negotiations with Israel or recognizing it,” Mr. Zahar told Reuters. “It will not be possible for the interim national government to participate or bet on or work on the peace process with Israel.”
Ahmed Youssef, a former deputy foreign minister of Hamas who now serves as a consultant to it in Gaza, said by telephone that Palestinians were “really disappointed in the Obama administration” and what they had originally been led to believe was a new American vision for the region. He added that the warmth of the new leadership in Egypt allowed it to place its confidence in its good offices.
In Gaza, people received the news of the accord with a mixture of skepticism and cautious optimism.
“I’m happy for the reconciliation but unhappy about the reasons that led to this agreement,” said Khalil Ghabin, 48, a grocer. “The changes in the region forced them to reconcile, and they did this because they were afraid that the flames of change would burn them. If there was no upheaval, they would not have agreed.”
The bottom line for the rest of the world? The Israel vs Palestine conflict will continue.
As I've said many, many times before, this conflict will continue until the CITIZENS of both states (and I consider Palestine a state even if not recognized by the UN) demand their governments stop fighting. If they do not, this will continue until our Sun dies.
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