By Asher Susser - from the Toronto Star
Much of the analysis on the recent Fatah-Hamas reconciliation is a good example of this faulty paradigm. After years of mutual hostility, Hamas and Fatah have essentially papered over their differences to pave the way for the creation of a unity government that will make it easier for the international community to recognize Palestinian independence. This is a move directed at the UN General Assembly and is not even intended for Israel. No one on the Palestinian side, neither in Fatah nor in Hamas, would seriously regard the inclusion of Hamas in a Palestinian government as a gesture of goodwill toward Israel, or to the U.S. for that matter.
The agreement is a reflection of Fatah’s increasing weakness after the demise of its greatest Arab ally, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. The new post-Mubarak Egypt is one in which the Muslim Brotherhood, the parent movement of Hamas, is widely expected to be a dominant player. This is wind in the sails of Hamas as much as it is the deflation of Fatah. It is also reason for Israeli concern about the future of the peace treaty with Egypt, to which the Muslim Brotherhood were and are firmly opposed.
Since the agreement with Fatah, spokesmen for Hamas have given no indication of any change in their position toward Israel. They still say they will continue the fight against Israel after the creation of a Palestinian state, and they do not have any intention of recognizing the Jewish state. They are willing to accept a two-state solution subject to a referendum, they say. But this referendum is to be held not only among all the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza but in the diaspora, too. This is intended to place the issue of large-scale Palestinian refugee return to Israel at the top of the agenda.
No one in Hamas really expects the Palestinian diaspora to endorse a two-state solution without such refugee return. This was and is a non-starter for Israel and is a Hamas ploy to base the “solution” on what is no more than a euphemism for dismantling Israel as the state of the Jewish people. This is not even intended as the basis for an agreement, but only as a design for endless conflict. It is precisely the refugee issue, more than any other, that has made Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking so elusive. The recent violent incidents of “Nakba Day” on Israel’s borders, focusing on the rejection of Israel’s very creation in 1948, rather than on its withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967, is as clear an indication as any of where the real obstacles lie.
Israel has offered statehood to the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, with the Palestinian capital in Arab Jerusalem and a corridor linking the territory of the West Bank with Gaza. But Israel’s offer was rebuffed twice, in 2000 and again in 2008, even though the Israelis had increased their proposed withdrawal from some 95 per cent of the West Bank to 100 per cent (with land swaps). Israel’s initial proposal was met with an onslaught of suicide bombers sent by Hamas and Fatah too, not to mention the rocketry from Gaza even after Israel’s complete withdrawal from the territory in 2005. In their 2006 parliamentary elections the Palestinians gave Hamas a whopping majority. Henceforth, Fatah could not deliver without Hamas. The problem is, however, that Fatah cannot deliver with Hamas, either.
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