The reconciliation “summit” between PLO Chairman + Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas [on the right in the photo below] and Hamas Politibureau chief Khaled Meshaal [on the left, beaming, beside Abbas] went ahead in Cairo on Thursday 24 November.
In an almost-surreal — though all too real — backdrop to this meeting, the widely-detested use of tear gas continued against groups of people identified as protestors around the country, as in Cairo, around the Ministry of Interior and Tahrir Square, the military er”}began the construction of a concrete Wall [“Security Barrider”] topped with coils of barbed wire to cordon off the demonstrators. Some have vowed to mount the barriers on Friday, however… And members of the currently-ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces [SCAF] announced they would go ahead with the first phase of parliamentary elections that have been scheduled to begin on Monday 28 November.
In the Palestinian reconciliation summit, however, there were few concrete results announced — how could there be, with big economic sanctions ready to drop if there had been any announced agreement? — but it was packaged as a general overall success, the launch of a new era of cooperation.
Photo provided by the Office of Khaled Meshaal and published in The Daily Star [Lebanon] here: Palestinian Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, left, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas
are seen together during their meeting in Cairo.
(AP Photo/Office of Khaled Meshaal) EDITORIAL USE ONLY, NO SALES
An analysis of the outcome
The Associated Press reported, hours after the meeting, that “Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal talked for two hours in Cairo but did not reach agreement on touchy matters like the composition of an interim unity government and a date for elections. The meeting raised new questions about whether the rivals are serious about sharing power, or just going through the motions”. This report was published on the CBS news site, here. This is probably way too superficial, and simplistic.
The Daily Star published excerpts from an AFP interview with Meshaal afterwards. According to The Daily Star, Meshaal told AFP that “We believe in armed resistance but popular resistance is a programme which is common to all the factions … Every people has the right to fight against occupation in every way, with weapons or otherwise. But at the moment, we want to cooperate with the popular resistance”.
OK.
Reigning in the rocket fire from Gaza
According to the story in The Daily Star, “the two leaders approved a two-page document reiterating their commitment to the main elements of the original deal, which was signed in May, and hailed a new era of ‘partnership’ between their two factions. The document, a copy of which was seen by AFP, outlines an agreement to observe a truce in the West Bank and Gaza Strip along with ‘the adoption of popular resistance which is to be to be strengthened … This resistance will be increased and organised and there is to be an agreement on its style, on greater efficiency and the formation of a framework to direct it’, it said”.
This language seems to apply to Gaza as much as to the West Bank — though Popular Resistance is the strategy that evolved recently in the West Bank in opposition to The Wall and to expanded Israeli settlement activity, and was endorsed by Abbas in the lead-up to the Palestinian “UN bid”, filed on 23 September in New York, for full membership in the international organization.
At the end of October, UNESCO members voted in Paris to admit Palestine as a full member state — and Israel immediately imposed economic sanctions including withholding of the transfer of VAT + customs tax it collects for the Palestinian Authority under the 1994 Paris Protocol, part of the Oslo Accords. Though the US Congress also voted for sanctions, including a withholding of funding to UNESCO, the Obama Administration is trying to hold off on measures that would negatively impact the Palestinian Authority.
Palestinian firing of rockets from Gaza in response to every Israeli attack is claimed as a “natural response”, but the IDF Chief of Staff has recently said that he believes an major military operation may be required to stop this. Now, smaller armed groups claim credit for these sporadic actions, but the Israeli military + government say they hold Hamas ultimately responsible, because it is in control in the Gaza Strip.
Abbas has in the past called this sporadic projectile firing “stupid”, but hasn’t spoken out too much recently, at least publicly.
The Daily Star added that “Meshaal did not go into detail about the focus on popular resistance but said he had instructed the movement’s leadership in Gaza and Damascus, to ‘adopt a political line and one with the press that doesn’t upset the conciliatory spirit and that truly reflects the atmosphere of reconciliation … I asked them to take practical and positive measures to flesh out this agreement’.” This report is posted here.
So, one effect of this meeting appears to be that the Hamas political leadership will be able to use the highly-valued doctrine of national unity to back up a decision to stop projectile firing by smaller separate militant groups.
Palestinian political prisoners
AP also reported that “In a show of good intentions, the two leaders decided that activists of the two movements would be released from detention, said Azzam al-Ahmed, an Abbas envoy”. This was one of the main demands of the Palestinian “youth” protesters, and has been announced several times this year, before and after the reconciliation agreement initialled in May.
Like the Egyptian military leadership, the Palestinian leadership has claimed that the prisoners each side holds are held on charges of criminal activity, not their political beliefs…
The pending “UN bid”
Meanwhile, the Palestinian “UN bid” is still pending, and the Hamas leadership has not opposed it. There is no indication from the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah, at least for now, of what decision they will make in light of a likely failure to get enough votes to pass n the UN Security Council, which would trigger a threatened U.S. veto.
Either way, the lack of support within the UN Security Council is a “come back later” decision.
The Palestinians could simply leave their request pending — or they could withdraw it, which would make this leadership look bad in front of their own Palestinian constituency, which was galvanized by the decision to stand up to the negative pressure by filing, as their right, the request for full UN membership. The third option, which seemed to be the most favored by mid-November, when the report of situation inside the UN Security Council by its membership committee was made public, would be to force a public vote, and failing for one or the other reason to get a positive decision now. The advantage of this third option would be, as angry and annoyed Palestinians explained, to make major states take responsibility in full view of the world for their positions.
Some disposition of the Palestinian “UN bid” has to be made if the Palestinian leadership wants to take an alternative route, going to the UN General Assembly for an upgrade in status from observer organization to observer, but non-member, state.
This is an option that could have — and some analysts, including this one, think should have — been exercised prior to filing the “UN bid” in the Security Council, where they knew it would be blocked.
Only the leadership in Ramallah has the standing to make the “UN bid”. Mahmoud Abbas holds all three reins of Palestinian power at the moment — he is head of the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] and Chairman of its Executive Committee, which is functioning, nominally at least, as the provisional government of the State of Palestine declared in November 1988.
Abbas is also the leader by acclamation of Fatah, the largest Palestinian political movement. And he still functions as President of the Palestinian Authority set up under the Oslo Accords by agreement between the PLO + Israel.
There appears to be a tacit agreement not to proceed with the formation of a new Palestinian government, even one composed of non-politically-affiliated “technocrats”, because that would complicate the dynamics of “UN bid” and trigger massive international sanctions against the new government on a scale even greater and with more impact on a new credit-and-consumer addicted West Bank population than those imposed after Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestine Legislative Council [PLC] in January 2006 elections.
While the Fatah membership base was badly affected, the leadership was largely insulated from mostly all impact but the largely-silent backlash in public opinion. As a result, Fatah — which was furious about their 2006 electoral loss — basically had an attitudinal duality toward these 2006 economic sanctions. They could not stop themselves from feeling vengefully pleased with the more punitive effects against the Hamas organization in Gaza.
Palestinian political power-sharing + new Palestinian elections
What is at stake in the current reconciliation talks between Abbas + Meshaal is the integration of Hamas into the PLO — which was agreed in a previous Cairo reconciliation negotiation in 2005. But, there was no agreement in the ensuing years about what proportion, or percentage, of seats Hamas would get in the PLO’s National Council [PNC].
Hamas wanted to have the same percentage as the number of seats they won in 2006 elections to the PA Legislative Council [PLC], which was over 60 percent. Fatah has been adamant: no way. Fatah officials have said in interviews with this journalist that they would not accept any more than 25 percent Hamas participation. Their argument is that, even in Gaza, which has been controlled by Hamas since their rout of Fatah/Palestinian Preventive Security Forces, there is political opposition [currently, prudently dormant] to Hamas, who they would not be able win 100 percent of the vote in the Gaza Strip where some 1.5 million Palestinians are currently trapped.
The Palestinian population of the West Bank is believed to be around 2.6 million people. And, there are believed to some 5 million Palestinians living in the diaspora outside the occupied Palestinian territory — not counting the 1.25 million or so who are citizens of Israel.
Just for the sake of “demographic” comparison — [though the word sounds so similar to “democratic”, demographic arguments are essentially anti-democratic in nature, resting as they do a concept of the imperative security need for majority supremacy which has animated much anxious Israeli nationalist political platforms since the outbreak of the Second Palestinian Intifada in 2000] — these estimates brings the total global Palestinian population to about 10 million people. The comparison: there are now over 7 million citizens of Israel, including the 1.25 million Palestinians, meaning that there are some 6 million Jews currently living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Most analysts who get involved in this touchy subject posit a theoretical Jewish-Palestinian equality in this territorial area — which is also viewed as dangerous. But, numerical equality seems to be achievable only by lopping of some part or other of the total Palestinian population.
In any case, the Ramallah leadership is now committed — in response to Palestinian “youth” protests that started in support of the Egyptian demonstration centered in Tahrir Square on January 25 — to organize elections:
(a) not only for the new PA President but also
(b) for a new PA Legislative Council [PLC], which would reveal the current electoral strength of Hamas vs. Fatah, at least in the occupied West Bank [theoretically including East Jerusalem] and Gaza [the oPt. It should be noted that Hamas participated as a political concession in those 2006 elections for the PLC, an organ of the PA created by the Oslo Accords which they don’t like at all];
(c) as well as for municipalities in the oPt;
(d) AND for the first time for the PNC [which could theoretically result in a quite different gauge of the current electoral strength of Hamas vs. Fatah in the global Palestinian population].
Next steps?
It has been announced that there will be another reconciliation meeting in early December. Probably it will be a “summit”. Maybe it will be in Cairo.
Whatever, it will still come after the 29 November anniversary of the UN General Assembly adoption, in 1947, of the “partition” resolution 181, which recommended diving up the British-administered Palestine Mandate into two states, one Jewish and one Arab.
This iconic date — marked in the UN as the Day of International Solidarity with the Palestinian People — is a date to be watched for a possible Palestinian move to deal with their “UN bid”.
Strategic Palestinian interests, particularly the need to avoid harsh economic retaliation, may continue to necessitate a prolonged waiting game, however.
The AP reported after the Cairo reconciliation summit that “Participants would only say the formation of the government was discussed, and that lower-level talks would continue. Abbas avoided specifics in the meeting, including on the government issue, leaving Hamas wondering whether he is playing for time, said a Hamas official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss details of the meeting. Abbas would face a Western backlash — possibly including political isolation and the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in international aid — for striking up a political partnership with Hamas and allowing activists of the widely shunned movement into the Palestinian security forces. Both sides reiterated that elections should go ahead, as planned, in May, but did not set a date. Voting plans could easily be derailed because Hamas has demanded assurances that Israel will not target or arrest its candidates, as it did after the 2006 parliament vote. Abbas’ Fatah movement, meanwhile, remains in disarray and seems unprepared for elections”.
In the meantime, other developments in the region and internationally could bring other surprises that might have a major impact on the Palestinian situation — either for better or for worse…