RAMALLAH // The latest attempt to end a seven-year rift between Hamas and Fatah has been greeted with scepticism by Palestinian observers and anger from Israel and the United States.
The Palestinian factions announced on Wednesday they would implement a unity deal brokered in Cairo three years ago that promised to unite the Hamas-run Gaza Strip and the Fatah faction in the West Bank.
There is widespread Palestinian support for reconciliation but the formidable differences between the two groups that ended previous reconciliation attempts appear to remain unresolved.
The accord, which calls for forming a unity government in five weeks and holding national elections in six months, may be more a reflection of factional infighting than a sudden spirit of rapprochement, said Talal Okal, an independent political analyst who lives in Gaza.
“Let’s just say I’m not optimistic about this,” he said.
He and others said there was suspicion that Fatah’s leader, the Palestinian Authority (PA) president, Mahmoud Abbas, was attempting to use the pact to pressure Israel to offer concessions in the Washington-sponsored peace talks that will expire on Tuesday.
Israel and the United States classify Hamas as a terrorist organisation, and news of the Islamist’s potential unification with Mr Abbas’s group has irked leaders on both sides.
Israel yesterday said it had suspended peace talks, pushed by the US secretary of state, John Kerry. The talks had verged closer to collapse after Israel last month refused to keep its promise to release a fourth batch of Palestinian prisoners. That prompted the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), of which Mr Abbas is also the leader, to join 15 international conventions despite promising the US not to do so before the nine-month time frame for the talks had ended.
While Israel and its allies in Washington may feel rattled by Mr Abbas’s sudden push towards reconciliation with Hamas, they will note how readily previous reconciliation attempts collapsed.
Officials from both sides sought to reinvigorate the Cairo accord twice in 2012 (in Doha and in Cairo) but that also failed. The factions had differences over whether to fight Israel or negotiate peacefully with it, as well as a mutual refusal to share control over each other’s respective security forces. Those differences remain unchanged.
The way in which Hamas readily agreed to Wednesday’s accord with Fatah may be a sign of how week the militant group has become.
The agreement signed in Gaza appears, on paper, “to be a total Hamas capitulation to the PLO and Abbas,” Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian analyst living in Jordan, said wrote on the US-based Al Monitor website.
Mr Abbas is expected to head the new interim government and has indicated that peace talks with Israel could continue during this time. Hamas, which calls for Israel’s destruction, has been sceptical if not outright hostile to such negotiations.
But the group’s fortunes have faded dramatically since the removal from government of its Muslim Brotherhood allies in Egypt last summer.
Gaza has been under siege from the Israelis since 2007 and the territory’s isolation has been amplified by Cairo’s decision to destroy smuggling tunnels that brought Gazans food, medicine and construction materials.
Gazans have suffered fuel shortages, electricity blackouts and lack of construction materials since 2007 when Israel began imposing its siege on the territory after Hamas captured it from Fatah forces.
The difficult conditions in the territory have infuriated Gaza’s 1.7 million residents and undermined the Hamas leadership.
Possibly emboldened by Hamas’s weakened position, Mr Abbas and his Fatah faction decided to risk entering another reconciliation pact with the intention of using it as a tool to pressure Israel.
But with Israeli settlement expansion continuing apace on land wanted for a Palestinian state, such political manoeuvring would ultimately prove as useless as it has over the last seven years, said Mr Okal.
“For the sake of the Palestinian people, both sides must find themselves obliged to see reconciliation through, because it’s the only exit from the crisis.”
foreign.desk@thenational.ae