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Agreement struck in Saudi Arabia between Hamas and Fatah: Expecting Mecca
The entire next phase of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict rides on the durability and honesty of the agreement struck in Saudi Arabia between Hamas and Fatah, writes Ramzy Baroud*
The Mecca Agreement, signed between rival Palestinian groups Hamas and Fatah on 8 February under the auspices of the Saudi leadership, was welcomed by thousands of cheering Palestinians throughout the occupied territories, seen as the closing of a chapter of a bloody and tumultuous period of their history. Officially, although more subtly, there is an equal eagerness to bring to an end oppressive economic and diplomatic sanctions that have rendered most Palestinians unemployed and lost well below the poverty line.
In fact, almost all Palestinians want to remember, if they must, the bloody clashes that claimed the lives of over 90 people since December as a distant memory, a bitter deviation from a norm of unity and national cohesion, according to which they want their struggle to be remembered.
Diplomatically, aides to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah and advisors to Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh are fanning out across the globe, each group heading to its traditional political milieus: the former to Western Europe and the United States, the latter to Middle Eastern and Islamic countries. Both Fatah and Hamas are keen to demonstrate that by endorsing agreement their fundamental position remains unchanged, an arduous task indeed.
Official reactions emanating worldwide are hardly encouraging. The so-called Middle East Quartet (the US, the UN, the EU and Russia), although they welcomed the agreement, hoping that it might produce the desired "calm", reiterated their conditions that must be unreservedly ratified by the Palestinian government if sanctions are to be lifted: the recognition of Israel, the renouncing of violence and the acceptance of past agreements signed between the parties, namely the Oslo Accords.
Though the Quartet is seen to have withheld final judgement on whether the formulation of the unity government constitutes an acceptance, either directly or by implication, of its three conditions, Israel is embarking on its own diplomatic campaign to heighten the pressure. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who was recently in Munich to attend a global security conference, has reportedly met the EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and foreign ministers of Austria, Sweden and other countries. She has also spoken to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice twice on the phone, as reported in the Israeli daily Haaretz. Her telephonic diplomacy has also reached Germany, Britain and Norway. Livni's behaviour is but an expression of the attitude that is currently being developed in Israel; the international community must continue to pressure Palestinians until the three Quartet conditions are satisfied in full from an Israeli point of view.
More
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/832/op6.htm
In fact, almost all Palestinians want to remember, if they must, the bloody clashes that claimed the lives of over 90 people since December as a distant memory, a bitter deviation from a norm of unity and national cohesion, according to which they want their struggle to be remembered.
Diplomatically, aides to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah and advisors to Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh are fanning out across the globe, each group heading to its traditional political milieus: the former to Western Europe and the United States, the latter to Middle Eastern and Islamic countries. Both Fatah and Hamas are keen to demonstrate that by endorsing agreement their fundamental position remains unchanged, an arduous task indeed.
Official reactions emanating worldwide are hardly encouraging. The so-called Middle East Quartet (the US, the UN, the EU and Russia), although they welcomed the agreement, hoping that it might produce the desired "calm", reiterated their conditions that must be unreservedly ratified by the Palestinian government if sanctions are to be lifted: the recognition of Israel, the renouncing of violence and the acceptance of past agreements signed between the parties, namely the Oslo Accords.
Though the Quartet is seen to have withheld final judgement on whether the formulation of the unity government constitutes an acceptance, either directly or by implication, of its three conditions, Israel is embarking on its own diplomatic campaign to heighten the pressure. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who was recently in Munich to attend a global security conference, has reportedly met the EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and foreign ministers of Austria, Sweden and other countries. She has also spoken to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice twice on the phone, as reported in the Israeli daily Haaretz. Her telephonic diplomacy has also reached Germany, Britain and Norway. Livni's behaviour is but an expression of the attitude that is currently being developed in Israel; the international community must continue to pressure Palestinians until the three Quartet conditions are satisfied in full from an Israeli point of view.
More
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/832/op6.htm
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"Mr Ismail Haniyeh, we designate you to form the Palestinian government," Abbas told Haniyeh, standing at his side, after Haniyeh formally resigned his post as prime minister in a procedural move to permit the launch of the coalition cabinet, Reuters reported.
Haniyeh accepted the task of drawing up a new cabinet at a joint news conference in Gaza aimed at launching a government that Palestinians hope will end factional fighting and overcome a paralysing Western aid boycott of the Palestinian Authority.
Haniyeh has up to five weeks to form a government. He remains caretaker prime minister until a new cabinet is formed.
Abbas told Haniyeh "I invite you to respect" past Palestinian agreements with Israel , in language that echoed the wording of an agreement reached last week in talks hosted by Saudi Arabi between Abbas's Fatah and Hamas.
Haniyeh vowed to "work in accordance" with Abbas's letter of designation and said he would launch contacts to form the government.
Analyst Hani Habib said he detected a new tone in Haniyeh's comments, which he described as "a reconciliatory speech on the internal front and a diplomatic language with the West".
A dispute over the composition of a unity cabinet had disrupted talks on Wednesday, April14 , prompting Abbas to put off an address he had been due to give about the new government on Thursday.
Two key issues of dispute were naming an interior minister, a post that oversees security services, and the fate of Hamas's5 ,600-member "executive" police force. Fatah is pushing for the force to be broken up but Hamas wants to keep it together.
Fighting between Hamas and Fatah killed more than 90 Palestinians between December and February. Both movements cited the violence as a key reason for pursuing a power-sharing pact.
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http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1171539738803&pagename=Zone-English-News/NWELayout
Abbas, who spoke first, didn't know how far Meshal was about to go with Koranic citations, and so he quickly switched to discussing secular matters. Meshal, however, made a brilliant showing. The lengthy verses he quoted by heart resounded throughout the huge auditorium and, if anybody was looking around, they would have noticed at least three Saudi royals murmuring the verses along with Meshal and nodding their heads approvingly.
Meshal, apparently, cleverly chose the right verses. "You can't come into the home of the Saudi royalty without being able to quote some long verses," an Egyptian journalist once said to me. "In the West, everyone always has a joke or some witty comment ready. In Egypt, you have to come up with an eloquent phrase in praise of the host. In Saudi Arabia, it's just Koranic verses. You'd think everyone there is some kind of religious sage," he explained.
Yet the verses that served as a backdrop for the unity agreement could not obscure one particularly interesting detail: Nowhere in the entire agreement, in all the speeches, and in the entire past year since Hamas came to power, has a single religious statement been heard from it. It seems like even Article 27 of the Hamas charter has been totally forgotten.
This section says that "Despite our esteem for the Palestine Liberation Organization and what it is capable of developing into, and without belittling its role in the Arab-Israeli conflict, we cannot exchange the Islamic nature of Palestine in the present or future for the adoption of secular ideas - Hence the day on which the Palestine Liberation Organization adopts Islam as its way of life we will be its soldiers and the fuel of its fire which will burn the enemy. However, until then - the Islamic Resistance Movement will treat the Palestine Liberation Organization as a son treats his father, brother treats brother, relative treats relative."
The positions have indeed changed: The son has become the father and Fatah has become just as dependent on Hamas as Hamas is on Fatah. The legitimacy of the Hamas government or of a unity government should it come to be, is no longer dependent on God, but on the political embrace between the two movements.
So where has the religious agenda disappeared to? Actually, the question that ought to be asked is how can a religious movement like Hamas advance itself without a publicly recognized religious leadership? Neither Meshal or Haniyeh is a religious scholar or religious arbitrator. In fact, since the assassination of Ahmed Yassin in March 2004, there hasn't really been anyone of great religious stature, or even anyone with a rigorous formal religious education, among the movement's leadership.
"Hamas has religious authorities whom the Israelis don't know," explains an associate of Haniyeh. "They're in the territories, some are in prison, and others are in Lebanon or in Egypt," he says, referring to the consultative council known as Majlis al-Shura, which numbers between 12-24 members and ostensibly imparts a religious seal of approval to the activities of Hamas' political wing.
But the Mecca agreement, which "forgot" to mention that Palestine is a Muslim state, makes one wonder about the involvement of any religious body in the decision-making process. Even if men of religion are involved, they do no more than lend their approval after the fact. Like other religious movements that realized that in order to survive, and moreover, to lead, they must heed the rules of the establishment - so Hamas, too, is in a process of mobilizing religion for the sake of politics.
"Hamas has two kinds of logic," explains Professor Shaul Mishal of Tel Aviv University, an expert on Hamas and the author of a book about the movement. "The first, which is permanent, fundamental and serves as the movement's calling card, is religion. And the second is a situational logic that enables Hamas to adopt a language familiar to all."
The professor adds: "This is a political language that is dictated by the spirit of the times and the political circumstances. In this way, the movement displays behavior that is even more rational than that of the secular movements like Fatah."
More
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/826605.html