By now the signing ceremony should have come and gone, the happy group handshakes completed before dozens of photographers. Egypt should be left with the glow of a job well done and a reaffirmation of its vital regional role.
But something happened along the road to intra-Palestinian peace. It’s not unusual for negotiations to get off track, but the latest setback has left prospects for Palestinian unity in particularly dire shape.
With potentially divisive national elections on the horizon, Cairo’s mediation efforts are beset by internal tensions and powerful external opposition.
“It doesn’t look good. Things have essentially collapsed,” said Mustafa Barghouti, an independent member of the Palestinian Legislative Council. “I believe it’s taking a dangerous turn for everybody.”
Hamas official and negotiator Salah el-Bardawil expressed similar sentiments, telling the Ramallah-based Maan news agency, “Now there are no contacts. The matter is totally frozen.”
When Egypt announced at the beginning of October that a preliminary deal had been struck to end two years of divided Palestinian rule, it seemed like something more than the usual statements of vague diplomatic optimism.
Cairo went so far as to set 26 October as the date for a signing ceremony, something it wouldn’t have done without a belief that both Hamas and Fatah were truly on board.
According to press reports, the two sides had signed off on a skeleton pact that included scheduling presidential and parliamentary elections for June 2010 and reinstating thousands of Fatah-associated security personnel who were purged when Hamas took sole control of Gaza in 2007. Until the elections, Gaza would be jointly governed by a multi-factional committee.
Things deteriorated quickly. Within days, Hamas officials announced they needed more time to consider the plan.
Then, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whose popularity is already in question, found himself engulfed in controversy when he backed delaying official UN discussion of the Goldstone report. The inquiry into Israel’s devastating siege on the Gaza Strip early this year was highly critical of the Jewish state’s actions, and Abbas was widely perceived as having caved to Israeli and American pressure.
Hamas leaders quickly joined in the backlash, essentially declaring Abbas a traitor to his own people.
“The Goldstone report was the last straw,” Damascus-based Hamas senior official Khaled Meshaal told reporters. “This is not a leadership that deserves our trust.”
Amid that dispute came a sudden blow to the already shaky trust between Hamas and Egypt. On 14 October, Youssef Abu Zohri, brother of prominent Gaza-based Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zohri, died in Egyptian police custody. Youssef had been arrested months earlier by Egypt after allegedly sneaking out of Gaza through a smuggling tunnel. Hamas angrily accused Cairo of torturing him to death. Egypt denied the charges and the matter remains unresolved.
By 16 October, Egypt was forced into an embarrassing about-face, indefinitely postponing the signing ceremony. Egyptian officials openly blamed Hamas for backing out of their agreement.
“There is no justification for this kind of behavior unless Hamas is against the idea of reconciliation itself,” said Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hossam Zaki.
Hamas officials quietly leveled their own accusations at Egypt, saying there were several crucial changes made to the agreement after they approved it.
Now it has settled into a staring contest. Abbas has already signed the draft agreement and Cairo is openly painting Hamas as standing in the way of peace.
“We are waiting,” Zaki said. “We feel they are in a corner because Fatah has already signed.”
Last week, Abbas raised the stakes, announcing that he would unilaterally schedule elections for 24 January, with or without an agreement. The move is meant to place further pressure on Hamas and raises the alarming prospect of a West Bank-only election that would further formalize the split between the two territories.
Abbas is gambling that Hamas fears being viewed as selfishly placing its own interests above Palestinian unity. But Hamas could gamble that Abbas lacks the basic credibility to pull off that strategy. The veteran politician, who succeeded the iconic Yasser Arafat, was already politically weak before the Goldstone affair. Now Abbas faces the widening perception that he is a mere instrument of Israeli policy.
If Abbas really intends to go through with Gaza-less elections, the move could prove highly unpopular among his own cadres and other Palestinian political forces.
“I don’t think Palestinians would accept elections in the West Bank only,” Barghouti said. “It would create very serious questions about their validity.”
Aside from the massive internal difficulties, there remains one seemingly insurmountable external obstacle to intra-Palestinian peace: Israel is openly against it, and seems to have the quiet backing of the United States.
Israeli officials have repeatedly stated they won’t deal with any unity government that gives significant power to Hamas, despite the fact that the militant group dominated the last election in 2006. American officials are more oblique in their language but essentially say the same thing.
According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, US Middle East envoy George Mitchell has told all sides that the Obama administration “expects any Palestinian government to follow the conditions of the quartet, which include recognition of the State of Israel, acknowledging earlier agreements and renouncing terrorism.”
All of which, it seems, pretty much disqualifies Hamas, begging the question of what there is to negotiate about.
