Role in Gaza Talks Signals a Comeback for Abbas

By Isabel Kershner / Aug. 12, 2014

JERUSALEM — For months called on President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority to break with , the Islamic group that controls Gaza, and to dismantle the new government that resulted from the reconciliation agreement.

That April deal scuttled the American-backed Middle East negotiations as Prime Minister repeatedly declared, “Whoever chooses the terrorism of Hamas does not want peace.”

But Mr. Abbas is making a comeback as a major player in the Egyptian-mediated talks in Cairo to end the latest war in Gaza, and he is emerging as a potential linchpin for Israel, Egypt and Hamas as they seek new and lasting arrangements for that Palestinian coastal enclave.

Israel has no direct dealings with Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist, and Egypt under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has turned hostile to the group. So Mr. Netanyahu told reporters here last week that cooperation with the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority was “important” for the reconstruction of Gaza and the flow of humanitarian aid. He praised the authority for helping coordinate the second 72-hour cease-fire, which held for another day on Tuesday. And he has dropped his public condemnations of the Palestinian government.

“Things have changed, don’t you agree?” Yair Lapid, Israel’s finance minister and the leader of the government’s second-largest party, , said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.

“One of the problems we had with what they called the technocratic government was that everyone felt Hamas was too strong and might take over,” Mr. Lapid said. “Hamas has weakened since then, both militarily and policywise.”

If Israel had worried before that the Palestinian reconciliation government supported by Hamas was “a tool for Hamas to go to the West Bank, now it can be a tool for bringing the West Bank to Gaza,” he added. Udi Dekel, a former lead Israeli negotiator with the Palestinians who is now a research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in , said that most of the Israeli government supported this idea of “turning the reconciliation inside out.”

“The direction, without saying it loud and clear, is that Israel is reconciling itself to the reconciliation and trying to reap some benefits,” Mr. Dekel said.

Evidence of a change in Israeli policy came with the arrival of Ziad Abu Amr, the deputy prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, in Gaza on Tuesday. Mr. Abu Amr said that the Israelis had repeatedly denied him a travel permit from the West Bank during the fighting, but that word came around 10 a.m. that he could enter Gaza through Israel’s Erez crossing.

“I hope the Israelis are changing their mind and lifting the ban on the national reconciliation government,” he said in an interview. “I think Cairo is having a sobering effect. It’s going to bring everyone back to see reality and to be realistic.”

Mr. Lapid and other centrist ministers have put forward their own plans in recent days for an ambitious new order, including the restoration of Palestinian Authority control in Gaza. That ended in 2007, when Hamas routed Mr. Abbas’s forces, leading to a bitter seven-year schism between the Palestinian factions.

But Mr. Abbas remains politically weak among his people, and few of the Israeli ministers have an immediate prescription for restoring his rule in Gaza, beyond allowing the Palestinian Authority’s forces to supervise the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt. In addition, the fractious Israeli government coalition remains divided on the broader issue of peace and, some critics said, appears to lack any unified vision. The fact that several ministers have put forward plans “means the government has no plan,” Mr. Dekel said.

Hamas has demanded the lifting of the economic blockade of Gaza, an expansion of the permitted fishing zone in the Mediterranean, a new seaport, the reconstruction of Gaza’s airport and the release of Palestinian prisoners, possibly in exchange for the remains of Israeli soldiers killed in the recent fighting.

Israel backs the idea of an internationally financed reconstruction package for Gaza funneled through Mr. Abbas, to enable supervision and bolster his influence and standing among the Palestinians. Israel also wants measures to prevent Hamas from rearming.

Mr. Lapid’s diplomatic initiative calls for an international conference, hosted by Egypt, to include the United States, Europe, Russia, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Israel and “moderate Arab states including Saudi Arabia,” to work for the demilitarization of Gaza and the return of the Palestinian Authority there.

Mr. Lapid said that the plan was being discussed in the Israeli government and that there had been “some very interesting reactions from the Arab world,” though he refused to elaborate. “Everyone understands that the point is not to have some extended cease-fire for Gaza that will collapse in a few months or a year and a half at best. Something deeper needs to be achieved, and so there is a need to get the Arab world involved.”

Another senior member of Mr. Lapid’s party, Yaakov Peri, the government’s minister for science and technology, went further, telling The Washington Post this week that the scope of the talks could expand to include a permanent Israeli-Palestinian peace deal based on the Arab Peace Initiative, a plan first proposed in 2002 that offered Israel normalized relations throughout the Arab world.

Tzipi Livni, the justice minister and the government’s chief negotiator with the Palestinians, last weekend presented her parameters for talks that include the restoration of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza. Issues like the seaport and airport should be discussed with Mr. Abbas’s Palestine Liberation Organization, she said, “as part of a final status agreement.” Asked if Mr. Netanyahu had adopted her proposal, she said cryptically, “The principles represent most of my friends in the government.”

They presumably do not include Naftali Bennett, the leader of the right-wing Jewish Home party, who said in an interview on Israeli television on Monday that Mr. Abbas was “a partner for terror” and that the idea of a Palestinian state was over. “That line that Abu Mazen is some kind of Mama Teresa — we are deluding ourselves,” he said, referring to Mr. Abbas by his popular name.

Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s foreign minister and the leader of the ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, has called for a “decisive victory over Hamas.”

Prof. Efraim Inbar, the director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar- Ilan University, said that Israel did not view Mr. Abbas as powerful enough to take over Gaza in practice but that Israel was reluctant to re-invade Gaza. “What Israel wants is quiet at a minimum price,” Professor Inbar said. “For now the Egyptians say let him send a few soldiers to Gaza, and we are saying O.K. I don’t think it will go beyond that.”

Jodi Rudoren contributed reporting from Gaza.

A version of this news analysis appears in print on August 13, 2014, on page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: Role in Gaza Talks Signals a Comeback for Abbas.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/13/world/middleeast/role-in-gaza-talks-signals-a-comeback- for-abbas.html