Fatah-Hamas Reconciliation: A Preliminary Assessment By Michael Weiss MEDIA BRIEFING Introduction. A secret Egyptian-brokered deal has reportedly unified Fatah, the ruling secular party of the Palestinian Authority, with Hamas, the radical Islamist party that controls the Gaza Strip and is committed to Israel’s destruction. This news, delivered first through Egyptian state media, is of concern not only to the prospect of an Israel-Palestine peace agreement but to the future of the successful Palestinian state- building programme that has been overseen by Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. Details of the reconciliation accord have yet to be disclosed, although both sides say it involves the formation of a new caretaker government to be led by “independents” in advance of presidential and parliamentary elections (scheduled for December 2011). Azzam al-Ahmad, the Fatah negotiator, ISMAIL HANIYEH AND MAHMOUD ABBAS IN 2007 confirmed Wednesday that Fayyad will not SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS be in this caretaker government. Mahmoud al-Zahar, a Hamas government spokesman in Gaza, informed reporters, “All points of differences have been overcome.” He also added that, “Our programme does not include negotiations with Israel or recognising it. It will not be possible for the interim national government to participate or bet on or work on the peace process with Israel.” In the past, Hamas has demanded that any reconciliation with Fatah include the release of its officials and agents from PA prisons in the West Bank as well as the rescission of imposed ban on Hamas’s “charitable” and clerical activities there. A significant question of this unity deal is whether or not Hamas’ armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, will be incorporated into the 25,000-strong PA security force apparatus, 8,000 of whom have been trained by the United States military. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Fatah, led by PA President Mahmoud Abbas, had chosen the wrong side to make peace with. “There cannot be peace with both because Hamas strives to destroy the State of Israel and says so openly”, he told reporters. A US National Security Council spokesperson was equally pessimistic: “As we have said before, the United States supports Palestinian reconciliation on terms which promote the cause of peace. Hamas, however, is a terrorist organization which targets civilians.” A spokesperson for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, said “[w]e have to study the details of the agreement” before passing judgment. The PA has spent the last four months lobbying foreign governments to vote for a forthcoming United Nations General Assembly resolution in September to recognise Palestinian statehood along 1967 borders. Israel has strenuously objected to this unilateral program, insisting on the need for renewed peace negotiations. The United States has indicated that it agrees with Israel. Given this status quo, there are several key points and questions to consider in relation to the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation deal. What does this mean? Because no specifics have yet been made public yet, it’s important to note that, in 2007, when Fatah and Hamas embarked on a similar programme for a unity government following Hamas’s landslide parliamentary electoral victory in 2006, the arrangement swiftly deteriorated. In March 2007, when the so-called Mecca Agreement solidifying a joint government was signed, there were 46 reported kidnappings of civilians in Gaza and more than 25 killings. By June, a six- day civil war was underway that ultimately killed 161 Palestinians including 7 children and 11 women. Seven hundred more were wounded in a campaign of retributive violence on both sides characterised by “extra-judicial and willful killing”, according to the Palestinian Centre on Human Rights. One-thousand Palestinians, most Fatah-affiliated or loyal to the PA, were arrested by Hamas’s Executive Force and al-Qassam Brigades. Hamas threw Fatah fighters off the roofs of tall buildings and attacked private residences, hospitals and PA-controlled buildings in Gaza City. Naturally, there is still a great deal of resentment and mutual suspicion by both parties, which may be insurmountable in any practicable unity programme. Mahmoud al-Zahar, the senior Hamas leader who participated in the successful reconciliation talks, said as recently as 2008: “We are the Palestinian Authority. Hamas should govern Gaza and the West Bank” and that Fatah were “traitors” and “collaborators”. The future of Syria -- and Khaled Meshaal. Hamas’s core ideology is built upon a common platform of anti-Semitic Islamism and a shared long-term strategy of destroying the State of Israel. Internally, however, it is divided between and amongst three separate factions with different tactics for how best to achieve this. - The first faction is headed by Ismail Haniyeh, head of the de facto government in Gaza who alternates in interviews between flexibility and absolute rejectionism, depending on his audience. - The second faction, also based in Gaza, is led by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades senior commander Ahmed Jaabari, who is extremely hardline and religiously conservative. (The al- Qassams Brigade has often spawned breakaway Islamist groups of Salafi-Jihadis including the one that kidnapped BBC correspondent Alan Johnston in 2007 and the one that kidnapped and then murdered Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni several weeks ago.) - The third faction, based in Damascus, is led by Hamas’s ideologist-in-chief Khaled Meshaal, said to be the most “flexible” of the three. If a unity agreement was only struck now it may be because Meshaal’s safe haven as a guest of the Syrian regime is in jeopardy. The current six-week cycle of unrest and state repression rocking Syria threatens not only to remove the Baathist dynasty of Bashar al-Assad but also its harboring of Meshaal. The future of Fatah-Hamas unity may therefore be contingent on the future of the Syrian Revolution. Egypt’s role as arbiter. After the Egyptian Revolution ended the 30- year dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak, an interim government led by the Egyptian military and headed by Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, was installed to prepare the country for presidential and parliamentary elections. Tantawi well may consider that, whichever party wins power in six months, Egypt’s relations with Israel will be downgraded if not scrapped entirely. A recent Pew Poll found that 54 percent of HAMAS MILITANT SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS Egyptians want to tear up the 1978 Camp David Accord. Even if the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is the Palestinian offshoot, fares poorly in forthcoming elections, Egypt’s body politic will prove to be a decisive force in the future of Palestinian nationalism. Abbas as opponent of the United States. For its first two years in office, the Obama administration made the top priority of its Middle East peace policy that Israel institute a complete moratorium on construction in West Bank settlements, a policy that Mahmoud Abbas never thought central to renewing direct negotiations. As Abbas told Newsweek in an interview published this week, “It was Obama who suggested a full settlement freeze. I said OK, I accept. We both went up the tree. After that, he came down with a ladder and he removed the ladder and said to me, jump. Three times he did it.” Abbas has also expressed frustration with the White House’s role in vetoing a UN General Assembly resolution, which passed last month, condemning Israeli settlements. In light of the prior U.S. fixation on a settlement construction freeze as the precursor to direct talks, the veto was seen as embarrassing to both Abbas and Obama. The PA President’s outspokenness about his perceived failure of U.S. policy may indicate that the Palestine Liberation Organisation, which Abbas also heads, is planning to forego American advisement before shifting its policies or attitudes. At 76, Abbas has repeatedly threatened to resign from the Palestinian presidency, leaving Western leaders worried about who will succeed him. Nevertheless, Abbas’s behaviour may still be moderated by the United States’s greatest leverage in the Middle East: money. The PA is still aid-dependent and will not be able to make its annual budget without the more than $470 million a year donated by the U.S. State Department. Abbas has alleged that Iran gives Hamas $500 million per year. Al Jazeera’s “public diplomacy”. In January 2011, Al Jazeera published a tranche of leaked emails and meeting minutes relating to ten years of Israel-Palestine peace negotiations. They showed Palestinian negotiators compromising in principle on a host of key issues such as the ‘Right of Return’ of all Palestinian refugees to Israel; the incorporation of West Bank settlement blocs into Israel; and the internationalisation of holy sites in Jerusalem. Although most of these compromises had already been in the public domain, the so-called “Palestine Papers” caused a great deal of controversy in the international press and, particularly, the West Bank. Chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat, who was heavily quoted in these documents, accused Al Jazeera of trying to incite “a revolution [of Palestinians] against their leaders in order to bring down the Palestinian political system.” Abbas’ immediate response to the Palestine Papers was to call for pro-PA demonstrations outside government buildings in Ramallah. On January 25, he told journalists that he was prepared to go on Al Jazeera and face Arab audiences directly. Meanwhile, the PA had used its own airwaves and newspapers to vilify the Qatari news channel. Curiously, by mid-February, Abbas and Al Jazeera appeared to have made up; on February 14, Abbas issued a decree banning abuse and slander of the network from the West Bank. “[W]e must keep strong our relationship with Arab states,” he said. The role that Al Jazeera has played in fomenting and encouraging certain Arab revolts throughout the Middle East, whilst ignoring or downplaying others, cannot be underestimated.