Unity deal offers hope for Palestinians and a respite for Gaza
New York Times|
Updated: Oct 13, 2017, 03.09 PM IST
By Declan Walsh and David M. Halbfinger
CAIRO: After a decade of hostility and recrimination, the two main Palestinian factions came together in Cairo on Thursday to sign a reconciliation deal that holds out the tantalizing prospect of a united Palestinian front.
Hopes for the agreement, signed under the watchful eye of Egyptian intelligence, were tempered by the knowledge that many previous Palestinian initiatives have failed. Yet there is optimism that this time may be different, partly because the stakes are so much higher.
For the 2 million Palestinians of Gaza, trapped in a tiny coastal strip that is frequently compared to an open-air prison, the Cairo deal offered a potential respite from their lives of dire shortages of electricity and lifesaving medicine, as well as a chance to travel to the outside world.
For the Palestinian leadership, it held out the prospect of negotiating with Israel with a single voice, even as it forced the divided territory’s most radical militants to make painful concessions that acknowledged their own failure to advance their cause.
Hamas, which controls Gaza and has fought Israel three times, said it was ready to cede control of Gaza’s borders and allow the rival Palestinian Authority to effectively take over the day-to-day running of the territory.
It was a sobering reality check for a group that, despite years of fiery defiance and arms supplies from Iran, cannot rule Gaza without help from Fatah, the rival faction that controls the Palestinian Authority and was driven out of Gaza in violent clashes 10 years ago.
And for Mahmoud Abbas, the 82-year-old president of the Palestinian Authority, it could amount to a legacy-saving moment in the twilight years of his rule, after years of abject failure to negotiate a peace settlement with Israel. Although he was not in Cairo, Abbas gave his blessing to the deal, which he hailed as a “final agreement,” according to Agence France-Presse.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said that Israel “objects to any reconciliation that does not include” accepting international agreements, recognizing Israel and disarming Hamas. A Fatah-Hamas rapprochement would make “peace much harder to achieve,” Netanyahu said in a post on Facebook. “Reconciling with mass-murderers is part of the problem, not part of the solution.”
At a brief ceremony on Thursday at the headquarters of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service, which shepherded the negotiations, representatives from Hamas and Fatah kissed and embraced amid a smattering of applause from Egyptian and Palestinian officials gathered around them.
The Palestinians did not release the text of the agreement, and there was no mention of the thorny issues that remain unresolved, such as the fate of the main Hamas militia, or the network of tunnels under Gaza used by fighters and weapons smugglers.
But officials from both sides described a series of agreed measures that are due to unfold in the coming weeks, and which they say will both sideline Hamas from the day-to-day running of Gaza and create a political groundswell for a broader deal to reunite the Palestinian territories.
Egypt’s State Information Service said that the rivals had agreed to hand full control of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority by Dec. 1. Palestinian officials said that if the process goes well, Abbas could visit Gaza in the coming month, his first visit to the embattled coastal strip in a decade.
Egypt has set Nov. 21 for the next step of the process: a meeting in Cairo of all Palestinian factions that, it hopes, will be the start of talks toward a Palestinian unity government. Some Palestinian officials said they hoped such a government could be formed by January.
But much depends on how things transpire in Gaza over the coming weeks.
Under terms of the deal, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority will form a joint police force of at least 5,000 officers, and merge their ministries. One Hamas official said they would negotiate to slim down the bloated civil service, cutting up to 40,000 of the 200,000 jobs.
Two elements of the deal promise to quickly ease conditions in Gaza, which aid organizations have called an emerging humanitarian crisis.
The Palestinian Authority has agreed to lift sanctions that it imposed on Gaza this year as part of its effort to pressure Hamas into talks. The government cut electricity supplies to a few hours a day in Gaza and stopped paying government salaries, an important source of income in a besieged territory with a broken economy.
And Hamas will cede control of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, Gaza’s main lifeline to the outside world. That would allow Egypt to ease stringent cargo restrictions and enable Gazans to travel outside, perhaps the most significant change in the agreement.
But even if the two sides succeed in fully reuniting in the next round of talks, the new arrangement seems unlikely to improve relations with Israel, which has warned that it could not accept a unity government that included Hamas.
Hamas has insisted on its right to maintain control of its arsenal — including thousands of rockets, missiles and drones — as well as its militia and its network of fortified tunnels.
Across divided Palestine there were cautious celebrations.
In Gaza City, Gaza Strip, vendors passed out sweets to children in Soldier’s Square, a park at the center of town. Mona Khfaja, 37, a pharmacist who said she was unable to leave Gaza to seek treatment for kidney disease, said dissatisfaction with the crushing border restrictions had forced warring Palestinian leaders to the negotiation table.
“We do not want the flags of Fatah and Hamas, only the Palestinian flag,” she said.
In the West Bank town of Ramallah, Abu Ahmad, 56, said he was wary about getting his hopes up. “Many agreements have been signed in the past, but something has always caused these political parties to back away,” he said, “and I’m afraid there’s still a chance for that to happen again.”
The signing ceremony on Thursday followed two days of talks mediated by Egypt’s General Intelligence Service. The deal was signed by the deputy leader of Hamas, Saleh al-Arouri, and Azzam al-Ahmad, the head of the Fatah delegation.
Officials from both sides offered frank appraisals of the issues that divide them, and that could easily scupper this latest effort. Ayman Rigib, a Fatah negotiator in Cairo, pointed to the status of Hamas’ Qassam Brigades, with an estimated 20,000 fighters, and Hamas’ extensive tunnels.
“We’re worried about the tunnels,” Rigib said. “We’ve seen Hamas use them in 2014. Will they give us the maps? Will they shut them down? It has not yet been discussed.”
Another Palestinian concern is that a unity government involving Hamas could cause the Trump administration to cut funding to the Palestinian territories under congressional rules against funding terrorist organizations. U.S. lawmakers threatened to cut funding in reaction to a similar 2011 deal between Hamas, which the United States designates as a terrorist organization, and the Palestinian Authority. That agreement ultimately fell apart.
The United States gives the Palestinian Authority about $400 million in annual assistance. But for now, with Hamas ceding all administrative control of Gaza, there is little danger that aid would be cut off.
Grant Rumley, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the issues yet to be resolved would be the most difficult. “Hamas may be willing to cede more administrative control of Gaza,” he said, “but the parties have so far avoided the issues likeliest to derail the talks: namely the relationship with Israel and what to do with Hamas’s military wing.”
When leaders from Hamas and Fatah signed the 2011 deal, Abbas said, “We have turned the black page of division forever.” But the agreement quickly foundered amid opposition from Israel, which denounced it as a “victory for terrorism.”
This time, a broad Arab coalition is backing the deal, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
“This merger is going to cost a lot of money, and they will help us financially,” said Ahmed Yousef, an adviser to the Hamas leader Ismail Haniya, referring to Emirati and Saudi support. “The Egyptians also clearly got a green light from America. They are obviously trying to cook up something to help end this conflict.”
CAIRO: After a decade of hostility and recrimination, the two main Palestinian factions came together in Cairo on Thursday to sign a reconciliation deal that holds out the tantalizing prospect of a united Palestinian front.
Hopes for the agreement, signed under the watchful eye of Egyptian intelligence, were tempered by the knowledge that many previous Palestinian initiatives have failed. Yet there is optimism that this time may be different, partly because the stakes are so much higher.
For the 2 million Palestinians of Gaza, trapped in a tiny coastal strip that is frequently compared to an open-air prison, the Cairo deal offered a potential respite from their lives of dire shortages of electricity and lifesaving medicine, as well as a chance to travel to the outside world.
For the Palestinian leadership, it held out the prospect of negotiating with Israel with a single voice, even as it forced the divided territory’s most radical militants to make painful concessions that acknowledged their own failure to advance their cause.
Hamas, which controls Gaza and has fought Israel three times, said it was ready to cede control of Gaza’s borders and allow the rival Palestinian Authority to effectively take over the day-to-day running of the territory.
It was a sobering reality check for a group that, despite years of fiery defiance and arms supplies from Iran, cannot rule Gaza without help from Fatah, the rival faction that controls the Palestinian Authority and was driven out of Gaza in violent clashes 10 years ago.
And for Mahmoud Abbas, the 82-year-old president of the Palestinian Authority, it could amount to a legacy-saving moment in the twilight years of his rule, after years of abject failure to negotiate a peace settlement with Israel. Although he was not in Cairo, Abbas gave his blessing to the deal, which he hailed as a “final agreement,” according to Agence France-Presse.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said that Israel “objects to any reconciliation that does not include” accepting international agreements, recognizing Israel and disarming Hamas. A Fatah-Hamas rapprochement would make “peace much harder to achieve,” Netanyahu said in a post on Facebook. “Reconciling with mass-murderers is part of the problem, not part of the solution.”
At a brief ceremony on Thursday at the headquarters of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service, which shepherded the negotiations, representatives from Hamas and Fatah kissed and embraced amid a smattering of applause from Egyptian and Palestinian officials gathered around them.
The Palestinians did not release the text of the agreement, and there was no mention of the thorny issues that remain unresolved, such as the fate of the main Hamas militia, or the network of tunnels under Gaza used by fighters and weapons smugglers.
But officials from both sides described a series of agreed measures that are due to unfold in the coming weeks, and which they say will both sideline Hamas from the day-to-day running of Gaza and create a political groundswell for a broader deal to reunite the Palestinian territories.
Egypt’s State Information Service said that the rivals had agreed to hand full control of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority by Dec. 1. Palestinian officials said that if the process goes well, Abbas could visit Gaza in the coming month, his first visit to the embattled coastal strip in a decade.
Egypt has set Nov. 21 for the next step of the process: a meeting in Cairo of all Palestinian factions that, it hopes, will be the start of talks toward a Palestinian unity government. Some Palestinian officials said they hoped such a government could be formed by January.
But much depends on how things transpire in Gaza over the coming weeks.
Under terms of the deal, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority will form a joint police force of at least 5,000 officers, and merge their ministries. One Hamas official said they would negotiate to slim down the bloated civil service, cutting up to 40,000 of the 200,000 jobs.
Two elements of the deal promise to quickly ease conditions in Gaza, which aid organizations have called an emerging humanitarian crisis.
The Palestinian Authority has agreed to lift sanctions that it imposed on Gaza this year as part of its effort to pressure Hamas into talks. The government cut electricity supplies to a few hours a day in Gaza and stopped paying government salaries, an important source of income in a besieged territory with a broken economy.
And Hamas will cede control of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, Gaza’s main lifeline to the outside world. That would allow Egypt to ease stringent cargo restrictions and enable Gazans to travel outside, perhaps the most significant change in the agreement.
But even if the two sides succeed in fully reuniting in the next round of talks, the new arrangement seems unlikely to improve relations with Israel, which has warned that it could not accept a unity government that included Hamas.
Hamas has insisted on its right to maintain control of its arsenal — including thousands of rockets, missiles and drones — as well as its militia and its network of fortified tunnels.
Across divided Palestine there were cautious celebrations.
In Gaza City, Gaza Strip, vendors passed out sweets to children in Soldier’s Square, a park at the center of town. Mona Khfaja, 37, a pharmacist who said she was unable to leave Gaza to seek treatment for kidney disease, said dissatisfaction with the crushing border restrictions had forced warring Palestinian leaders to the negotiation table.
“We do not want the flags of Fatah and Hamas, only the Palestinian flag,” she said.
In the West Bank town of Ramallah, Abu Ahmad, 56, said he was wary about getting his hopes up. “Many agreements have been signed in the past, but something has always caused these political parties to back away,” he said, “and I’m afraid there’s still a chance for that to happen again.”
The signing ceremony on Thursday followed two days of talks mediated by Egypt’s General Intelligence Service. The deal was signed by the deputy leader of Hamas, Saleh al-Arouri, and Azzam al-Ahmad, the head of the Fatah delegation.
Officials from both sides offered frank appraisals of the issues that divide them, and that could easily scupper this latest effort. Ayman Rigib, a Fatah negotiator in Cairo, pointed to the status of Hamas’ Qassam Brigades, with an estimated 20,000 fighters, and Hamas’ extensive tunnels.
“We’re worried about the tunnels,” Rigib said. “We’ve seen Hamas use them in 2014. Will they give us the maps? Will they shut them down? It has not yet been discussed.”
Another Palestinian concern is that a unity government involving Hamas could cause the Trump administration to cut funding to the Palestinian territories under congressional rules against funding terrorist organizations. U.S. lawmakers threatened to cut funding in reaction to a similar 2011 deal between Hamas, which the United States designates as a terrorist organization, and the Palestinian Authority. That agreement ultimately fell apart.
The United States gives the Palestinian Authority about $400 million in annual assistance. But for now, with Hamas ceding all administrative control of Gaza, there is little danger that aid would be cut off.
Grant Rumley, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the issues yet to be resolved would be the most difficult. “Hamas may be willing to cede more administrative control of Gaza,” he said, “but the parties have so far avoided the issues likeliest to derail the talks: namely the relationship with Israel and what to do with Hamas’s military wing.”
When leaders from Hamas and Fatah signed the 2011 deal, Abbas said, “We have turned the black page of division forever.” But the agreement quickly foundered amid opposition from Israel, which denounced it as a “victory for terrorism.”
This time, a broad Arab coalition is backing the deal, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
“This merger is going to cost a lot of money, and they will help us financially,” said Ahmed Yousef, an adviser to the Hamas leader Ismail Haniya, referring to Emirati and Saudi support. “The Egyptians also clearly got a green light from America. They are obviously trying to cook up something to help end this conflict.”
