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The Reconciliation of Hamas and Fatah : Smoothing the Way to The

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The Reconciliation of Hamas and Fatah : Smoothing the Way to The ACADEMIC PEACE ORCHESTRA MIDDLE EAST POLICY BRIEF FOR THE MIDDLE EAST CONFERENCE ON A WMD/DVS FREE ZONE NO. 3 • DECEMBER 2011 The Reconciliation of Hamas and Fatah Smoothing the Way to the Middle East Conference by Contributing to Peace and Security in the Region Margret Johannsen (Coordinator), Ziad AbuZayyad, Karima El Ouazghari, Judith Palmer Harik, Anat Kurz, and Jamil Rabah In their review of the Nuclear The Palestinian Split: Abstract Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) on 28 May Features and Factors 2010, the 189 parties to the NPT endorsed a The reconciliation agreement between Final Document call ing for a 2012 Conference The formal political split between Hamas the two major Palestinian factions Hamas to be attended by all Middle East states on the and Fatah dates back to June 2007 when and Fatah could contribute to reviving the establishment of a Middle East zone free of Hamas militias took over the Gaza Strip after fl edgling Middle East peace process. This weapons of mass destruction including their attacking Fatah-led Palestinian Authority POLICY BRIEF identifi es the platform of the delivery vehicles. The document called on (PA) security forces. They claimed that their future Palestinian government as the key the UN Secretary General and the United coup was a pre-emptive act aimed at aborting for linking Palestinian unity and the possible States of America, the United Kingdom, a planned attack by Fatah to liquidate Hamas resumption of the Israeli-Palestinian peace and the Russian Federation (the co-sponsors militias. The take-over was followed by the process; progress on this front could help of the 1995 Resolution on the Middle East) ousting of the short-lived Saudi-mediated mitigate regional tensions and therefore to consult with the states of the region on unity government and the establishment by enhance prospects for success of the 1 specifi c preparatory steps. presidential decree of a caretaker government envisaged 2012 Middle East Conference. in the West Bank; meanwhile Hamas retained Any political settlement between Israel and It is too early to predict at this stage of the its own government in Gaza. the Palestinians requires the presence of a preparations, how questions such as regional representative acceptable by both Gaza and rivalries and drive for hegemony, hostile and The split between Hamas in Gaza and Fatah the West Bank. As such, Palestinian recon- friendly alliances, win-win versus zero-sum in the West Bank led each party to create a ciliation is a pre-requisite to achieving peace thinking and confl icting interests of regional monopoly of force in their respective areas and security in the region. states will impact on the 2012 Middle East of control. The build-up and employment Conference (MEC). The linkage between of two separate security services is the most This POLICY BRIEF is based on contribu- the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation agreement conspicuous expression of this contest for tions made at the meeting of the ACADEMIC and the regional environment is only one of power and prevalence in the national arena. PEACE ORCHESTRA MIDDLE EAST in Vienna in many issues connected to the MEC. Both are The Legislative Council, which was democra- July 2011. The Working Group on the 2012 in fl ux, infl uence each other and resemble tically elected, is since defunct. Two parallel Middle East Conference included academic moving targets. When identifying conditions governments rule in Ramallah and in Gaza, colleagues from Germany, Israel, Lebanon, for success or failure for the Conference the both of them without electoral legitimization. and Palestine. Margret Johannsen acted as weapons issue needs to be put within the Presidential and parliamentary elections coordinator. overall framework of regional security and are not only overdue but also necessary if stability of which reconciliation between the process of building the institutions of a Hamas and Fatah is an important ingredient. future sovereign and democratic Palestinian Two related issues are of immediate impor- state is to continue. Any political settlement tance to regional instability and deserve between Israel and the Palestinians requires a special attention. The fi rst is the political Palestinian representative acceptable to both split in the Palestinian arena; the second is Gaza and the West Bank. As such, Palestinian the security tensions between Hamas and reconciliation is a pre-requisite for achieving Israel. peace and security in the region. ACADEMIC PEACE ORCHESTRA MIDDLE EAST – POLICY BRIEF NO. 3 • DECEMBER 2011 At the same time, the weapons fi red at Israeli Margret Johannsen is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Peace Research territory are also an expression of the power and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH). She obtained her struggles within the intra-Palestinian sphere. doctorate with a thesis on “American nuclear weapons in Europe”. Since 2009 she The breakdown of the six-month truce has co-edited the annual German Peace Report. Her research interests include which preceded the Gaza War of 2008/09 is confl ict transformation and arms control in the Middle East. She is lecturer in the evidence that, in a political sense, the rockets program Master of Peace and Security Studies at the University of Hamburg. and grenades were also directed against the Palestinian Authority. They were meant to Ziad AbuZayyad is an attorney-at-law and a weekly columnist of Al-Quds Arabic prove its incapacity to deliver the commodity daily newspaper. He is a former Palestinian Authority Minister and a former member Israel was most seeking, namely security, so of the Palestinian Legislative Council. From 1994-1996 he was head of the Palestinian that the PA was unable to make any progress delegation to the Arms Control and Regional Security Working Group of the Middle in the negotiations with Israel on fi nal status East multilateral peace talks. In 1994 he helped to establish the Palestine-Israel Journal issues. Escalation between Israel and Hamas of Politics, Economics and Culture and has since acted as co-editor and publisher. became part of the internal competition Karima El Ouazghari is Research Associate at the Peace Research Institute between different factions targeted by Israel (PRIF) and PhD Student at Goethe University, Frankfurt. She holds a degree besides the rivals Hamas and Fatah. in Political Science and German language and literature. Her current research project is entitled: “Islamic opposition movements and the state: The case With tensions upheld by tit-for-tat military of Jordan and Tunisia”. Her expertise includes the African Union, Islamic operations in the Gaza sphere, the political opposition movements in Arab countries and Political Islam. climate in the region might well deteriorate so that it adversely affects the preparations of the Judith Palmer Harik is a political analyst and President of Matn University, MEC. An eventual reconciliation of Hamas Beirut. She holds an MA and a PhD from the University of Iowa and was and Fatah would therefore remove one of the professor of comparative politics at the American University of Beirut from obstacles that has obstructed negotiations on 1981 until 2003. She has studied Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement since its a bilateral, jointly-agreed ceasefi re between emergence in the early 1980s and is the author of “Hezbollah – the Changing Hamas and Israel and which under the new Face of Terrorism”. conditions could be expected to be more sustainable than the truce declared by both Anat Kurz is Director of Research and Senior Research Associate at the Institute parties in June 2008. Alleviating the rocket for National Security Studies (INSS), Tel Aviv. She holds a PhD in political threat and allowing the Gaza area to recover science. She has published and lectured extensively on the Palestinian national both psychologically and materially would movement, Israeli-Palestinian relations, and policy dilemmas of dealing with undoubtedly enhance the prospects for the sub-state confl icts. Dr. Kurz is a regular participant in ongoing Track II dialogues envisaged Conference even if the rocket issue on Israeli-Palestinian confl ict resolution and Middle Eastern regional security. itself is not to be part of the agenda. Jamil Rabah is a pollster and political analyst. He was the fi rst to start scientifi c public opinion surveys in Palestine with the Jerusalem Media and The Unity Agreement Communications Center. Since 2000, he has been working as a full-time After long-lasting confrontation and researcher at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Geneva on a countless mediation efforts, Fatah and project to monitor Palestinian public perceptions of their living conditions. His Hamas managed under Egyptian auspices publications include “Palestine and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty”. to reach consensus on a number of measures which the signatories present as conducive The security tensions between to achieving Palestinian national unity. Hamas and Israel The agreed document entitled “Palestinian National Reconciliation Agreement” was One of the major problems overshadowing signed in Cairo on May 4, 2011 by the two the envisaged Middle East Conference is the major Palestinian factions as well as by each element of hostility in the Palestinian-Israeli of the relevant minor groups.2 arena. As the sporadic violent confrontations in the Gaza sphere and their media echo in The agreement provides for a shared provi- the region demonstrate, this is still a signi- sional government of independents whose fi cant feature of Middle Eastern relations. major tasks will be the preparation of The Gaza War of 2008/09 between Israel elections, making efforts to end the blockade and Hamas not only brought death and of the Gaza Strip and working on its reconst- destruction to the Gaza Strip and demons- ruction, as well as overcoming the Palestinian trated the vulnerability of southern Israeli split.
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