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The Wedding is On: Hamas and Fatah Unite in Palestinian Authority: Hana Levi Julian, Jewish Press, Jun 2, 2014 —Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahoud Abbas swore in what he called a new PA “unity government” today (Monday) at 1:00 p.m. local time in a televised ceremony in Ramallah.
Dangerous Unity: Jerusalem Post, June 1, 2014—Fatah and Hamas are slated to announce their unity government today.
Obama’s Embrace of Hamas Betrays Peace: Jonathan S. Tobin, Commentary, June 2, 2014— When Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas chose to scuttle peace talks with Israel this spring by deciding to conclude a pact with Hamas rather than the Jewish state, he was taking a calculated risk.
Why There is No Palestine: Rachel Bresinger, Jerusalem Post, May 26, 2014—After nine months of intensive talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, US Secretary of State John Kerry found out for himself that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not as simple as he might have thought.
Abbas: Why Would Israel Reject Palestinian Arab Unity Government?: Jewish Press, June 1, 2014
Netanyahu Urges World Not to Recognise Palestinian Unity Government: Jeffrey Heller, Reuters, June 1, 2014
In Ottawa, a Taxpayer-Funded Tribute to a Palestinian Terrorist: Karen James, National Post, May 30, 2014
THE WEDDING IS ON: HAMAS AND FATAH UNITE IN PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY
Hana Levi Julian Jewish Press, Jun 2, 2014
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahoud Abbas swore in what he called a new PA “unity government” today (Monday) at 1:00 p.m. local time in a televised ceremony in Ramallah. He apparently wasn’t confident enough to dare to do it in Gaza, and with very good reason. “Today, after announcing the government of national unity we declare the end of division that caused catastrophic harm to our cause,” Abbas said. “This black page in the history (of the Palestinians) has been turned forever, and we will not allow it to come back.” Initially, his new “unity” partners from the Hamas terrorist organization had declared they were backing out of the deal. But a few minutes later, Hamas official Salah Al-Bardaweel announced “the dispute between Hamas and Fatah has been resolved.”
Ministers who allegedly are politically unaffiliated took the oath of office at the inauguration, where Abbas vowed commitments and agreements made by previous PLO and PA administrations would be upheld. It is believed that he was referring to interim deals that were made with Israel. There are a total of 17 new ministers, including five from Gaza. It is not clear how the Gaza-based ministers will join any legislative meetings, since it is unlikely they will be able to travel out of the region — nor are the other 12 likely to travel often to Gaza.
Sami Abu Zuhri, spokesman for Gaza’s ruling Hamas terrorist organization, immediately disavowed the ceremony as a “unilateral” step and stated the terrorist group would “not recognize this announcement. Within the hour, he reversed himself, telling the AFP news agency, “We hail the national consensus government which represents all the Palestinian people.” He added the new government would enable the PA to “face the Israeli occupation.” What a surprise. Welcome to the Palestinian Authority unity government deal, the “Cha-Cha’ of the Middle East.
After a dozen or so leading-up announcements of how the PA unity government was “about to be completed,” Palestine Liberation Organization chief – and Fatah faction leader – Mahmoud Abbas apparently simply finally lost his patience and just set the wedding date. Abbas heads what remains of the gutted Palestinian Authority from its Judea and Samaria capital in Ramallah, as well as the PA’s leading Fatah faction, and its umbrella organization, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). In giving international media the heads-up that he would inaugurate the unity government one way or the other, he told reporters that Israel had already warned him it would shun such a government and that he would go ahead with the plan anyway.
Hamas, meanwhile, was threatening to renege on its commitment to the deal even after the swearing-in ceremony was being carried live on Hamas ‘al-Aqsa’ television. This time the excuse was the intent by Abbas to dissolve the PA Ministry of Prisoner Affairs, which Hamas called a “stab in the back” to terrorist prisoners. That wrinkle got worked out with the disputed Prisoners’ Ministry being given to Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah. Senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya had already told the Bethlehem-based Ma’an news agency, “We made concessions on all stages … but some sides misunderstood our lenience and flexibility.” Without that ministry, he said, Hamas would definitely not join the unity government. It would have been the umpteenth time that Hamas has backed out of a reconciliation deal at the ninth hour since it seized control of Gaza in 2007. Nothing new.
Abbas himself had no plans to turn his back on the bloodthirsty murderers who stole Israeli lives, and who he generously supports with monthly salaries from government coffers. Instead he was planning to form a prisoners’ affairs administration under the PLO. Officially listed as a terrorist organization in the United States as well as in Israel, this new government with Hamas gives America considerable pause: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned Abbas in a phone call over the weekend that it is not being taken lightly by the American government. According to State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki, Abbas assured Kerry on Sunday the new “unity government” would be “committed to non-violence and recognize Israel.” Kerry’s reply was that the U.S. would “judge the body by its composition, policies and actions.”
Jerusalem Post, June 1, 2014
Fatah and Hamas are slated to announce their unity government today. Preemptively, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warned the world yesterday not to recognize the new Fatah- Hamas government. Not only would the deal add obstacles to peace, explained Netanyahu, it would “strengthen terrorism.” “I call on all responsible elements in the international community not to run to recognize the Palestinian government of which Hamas is a part and which rests on Hamas,” Netanyahu said. “Hamas is a terrorist organization that calls for the destruction of Israel and the international community must not embrace it. This will not strengthen peace; it will strengthen terrorism.”
We agree with Netanyahu. Nevertheless, a number of arguments have been put forward in favor of the unity government. Indeed, Palestinians are overwhelmingly for the deal. Some say that reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas is good for peace because finally, after seven years, Palestinians have a single political leadership that represents the entire Palestinian people. No longer will Israel be able to claim that Abbas’s government represents at best only Palestinians living on the West Bank.
However, these supporters of reconciliation ignore the fact that Hamas continues to call for the violent destruction of the State of Israel. Just last week in Gaza City, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh told reporters that the “resistance that liberated the Gaza Strip is also capable of liberating the West Bank, Jerusalem and the rest of our land.” As reported by The Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh, Hamas’s two most senior representatives, Khaled Mashaal and Mahmoud Zahar, have said they will continue to use violence against Israel even after the formation of the unity government, emphasizing that Hamas has no intention of dismantling its military wing, Izzadin Kassam, as part of the unity accord.
Zahar has said Hamas is planning to take advantage of the unity deal to move its terrorist attacks against Israel to the West Bank. He also said that after its men set foot in the West Bank, Hamas will target Palestinians who “collaborate” with Israel. “Who said that those who are conducting security coordination with Israel would remain forever?” he asked, referring to the Fatah-dominated security forces in the West Bank. In a marvelous exercise in maintaining at one and the same time two radically contradictory messages, as Abbas claims the new Fatah-Hamas government will recognize Israel and use peaceful means for solving the conflict, Hamas officials are saying the exact opposite.
Another argument put forward by supporters of the Fatah-Hamas deal is that the reconciliation will facilitate Palestinians’ first democratic national elections since 2006, when Hamas routed Fatah. Moving ahead with new elections would strengthen Palestinians’ fledgling democracy and give new hope to Palestinians, who have grown apathetic and pessimistic about the efficacy of political activism and the democratic process.
While elections might end Palestinians’ long period of political limbo, there is no guarantee that new elections will vote for a more moderate Palestinians leadership. There is some room for optimism, however. A poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey that was published in March said that in parliamentary elections, Fatah would receive 43 percent of the vote and Hamas would receive 28 percent. Assuming similar results are obtained if and when elections are held, Israel might reconsider renewing ties with a Palestinian government coalition that does not include Hamas. However, until that happens, Israel must cut ties with the PA.
Back in 2006 after Hamas’s electoral victory, the Quartet – the US, the UN, the EU and Russia – imposed three conditions on Hamas: renounce terrorism, recognize Israel and honor past agreements signed between the Palestinians and Israel. Until Hamas agreed to these three conditions, the Quartet said it could not recognize a Palestinian government that includes Hamas. Hamas not only has refused to accept any of these conditions, it continues to openly declare its intention to use violence against Israel – and against Palestinians who dare to coordinate security arrangements with Israel.
Anyone listening to what Hamas is actually saying understands that not only will the unity deal fail to advance peace between Israelis and Palestinians, but that it will only boost terrorists and the opponents of peace.
OBAMA’S EMBRACE OF HAMAS BETRAYS PEACE
Jonathan S. Tobin
Commentary, June 2, 2014
When Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas chose to scuttle peace talks with Israel this spring by deciding to conclude a pact with Hamas rather than the Jewish state, he was taking a calculated risk. In embracing his Islamist rivals, Abbas sought to unify the two leading Palestinian factions not to make peace more possible but to make it impossible. Since Palestinian public opinion–indeed the entire political culture of his people–regards any pact that would recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state as a betrayal of their national identity, bringing Hamas back into the PA fold illustrated that he would not take the sort of risks that peacemaking required.
But given the PA’s almost complete dependency on the United States and Europe for the aid that keeps its corrupt apparatus operating, there was a genuine risk that the unity pact would generate a cutoff of assistance that could topple his kleptocracy. U.S. law mandated such a rupture of relations, as did the officially stated policy of the Obama administration that rightly regards Hamas as a terrorist group, not a legitimate political player. But there was a chance that Washington would accept a Palestinian deception in which technocrats would be appointed to rule in the name of the Fatah-Hamas coalition in order to pretend that the terrorists were not in charge.
In the weeks since the unity pact was concluded it wasn’t clear which way the U.S. would jump on the question of keeping the money flowing to Abbas, though at times Secretary of State John Kerry made appropriate noises at the PA leader about the danger of going into business with Hamas. But today’s press briefing at the State Department removed any doubt about President Obama’s intentions. When asked to react to today’s announcement of a new Fatah-Hamas government in Ramallah, spokesperson Jen Psaki said that the U.S. would accept the Palestinian trick. As the Times of Israel reports: State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Monday that Washington believes Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has “formed an interim technocratic government…that does not include members affiliated with Hamas…With what we know now, we will work with this government,” Psaki said. She did, however, warn that the US “will continue to evaluate the composition and policies of the new government and if needed we’ll modify our approach.” She later added that the administration would be “watching carefully to make sure” that the unity government upholds the principles that serve as preconditions for continuing US aid to the Palestinian Authority.
In recognizing the fig leaf of a “technocratic” government that is meant to distract the world from the reality that Hamas is now in full partnership with Abbas, the Obama administration may think it has put Israel’s government—which publicly called for the world not to recognize the Palestinian coalition—into a corner. But by discarding its own principles about recognizing unrepentant terror groups, Obama has done more than betrayed Israel. He has betrayed the cause of peace.
It would be a mistake to waste much time debating whether the cabinet Abbas has presented to the world is not really affiliated with Hamas. The people he has appointed are nothing but stand-ins for the real power brokers in Palestinian politics—the leaders of Fatah who lord it over those portions of the West Bank under the sway of the PA and the Hamas chieftains who have ruled Gaza with an iron fist since the 2007 coup in which they seized power there. Just like Abbas’s previous attempt to swindle the West into thinking that the PA intended to embrace reform during Salam Fayyad’s ill-fated term as prime minister, the “technocratic” cabinet isn’t fooling anyone. Americans and Israelis may have lauded Fayyadism as a path to a responsible Palestinian government that would eschew corruption and try to actually improve the lives of its people. But Fayyad was a man without a political constituency and, despite the support he had in Washington, was thrown overboard by Abbas and the PA went back to business as usual without a backward glance.
Nor is there any use arguing about whether it is Hamas that has been co-opted by Abbas and Fatah rather than the other way around. The two rival parties have very different visions of Palestinian society with Hamas hoping to eventually install the same kind of theocratic rule in the West Bank that it established in the independent Palestinian state in all but name in Gaza. But at the moment there is no fundamental difference between the two on dealing with Israel. Despite its unwillingness to recognize Israel even in principle and its refusal to back away from its charter that calls for the Jewish state’s destruction and the slaughter of its people, Hamas doesn’t want an open war with Israel anymore than Fatah. But by the same token, Fatah has demonstrated repeatedly over the last 15 years that it is as incapable of making peace with Israel, even on terms that would have gained it sovereignty over almost all of the West Bank and a share of Jerusalem, as Hamas. The two parties are genuinely unified in their desire to keep chipping away at Israel’s international legitimacy and to avoid peace at any cost.
Admitting this would be a bitter pill for an Obama administration that has invested heavily in Abbas, a man they have wrongly portrayed as a peacemaker even as they have vilified Netanyahu as an obstacle to a deal. So rather than honestly assessing their policy and owning up to the fact that five and a half years of attempts to appease Abbas and tilt the diplomatic playing field in his direction have done nothing to make him say yes to peace, the administration will go along with the PA’s deception.
That’s a blow to Israel, which now finds itself more isolated than ever. But the real betrayal doesn’t involve Obama’s broken promises to the Jewish state or to pro-Israel voters. By buying into the myth that Hamas isn’t involved with the new PA government, the president is putting a spike into the last remote chances for a peace deal in the foreseeable future. So long as the Palestinians are allowed to believe that there is no price to be paid for rejecting peace, there will be no change in their attitudes. By allowing American taxpayer dollars to flow to a government controlled in part by Hamas, Obama is violating U.S. law. But he’s also signaling that the U.S. has no intention of ever pressuring the Palestinians to take the two-state solution they’ve been repeatedly offered by Israel and always rejected. For a president that is obsessed with his legacy, that’s a mistake for which history ought never to forgive him.
Rachel Bresinger
Jerusalem Post, June 1, 2014
After nine months of intensive talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, US Secretary of State John Kerry found out for himself that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not as simple as he might have thought. For those unfamiliar with the history of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, as Kerry seems to have been, it may seem perplexing that the Israelis and Palestinians still can’t come to a peace agreement. The parameters for an agreement have been known for years – borders, Jerusalem and refugees, with two states for two peoples.
Since the Oslo Accords in the mid- ’90s, countless politicians and statesmen from all across the world have pushed for a peace agreement and the establishment of a Palestinian state. After years of discussions and hundreds of millions of dollars invested, chances for peace seemed as hopeful as ever in 2000 with the Camp David Accords. Then Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian people everything they wanted – a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and some 98 percent of the West Bank, with east Jerusalem as their capital and compensation for the Palestinian refugees. To the world’s surprise and president Clinton’s shock and dismay, Arafat turned down Barak’s offer without even making a counter-offer, after which Palestinian terror in the form of the second intifada soon followed.
The Palestinians were given essentially everything they asked for, yet did not accept the Israeli offer for peace and the creation of a Palestinian state. Why would the Palestinians have turned down an offer for everything they said they wanted? The answer is actually quite simple – because what the Palestinians and Yasser Arafat told the Western world they wanted was not in reality what they wanted. The Palestinians did not just want a Palestinian state in the Gaza and West Bank, but a Palestinian state in all of Israel. They wanted and still want all of what they term “Palestine,” from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, with there being no Jewish state in between.
Those who have studied in depth the history of the Israel-Palestinian conflict know that this fact is nothing new. Back in 1947 with the UN Partition Agreement, a state of Palestine could have been formed along with the creation of a very small, disjointed Jewish state, but the Arabs living in the area refused the UN’s proposal while the Jews accepted it. And just as Palestinian violence followed the Camp David Accords, so did Palestinian and Arab violence follow the 1947 Partition Agreement with the War of Independence in 1948. As Israel just celebrated its 66th year of independence, the Palestinians could have also been celebrating 66 or 67 years of independence.
The Palestinians voice their true desires quite openly in Arabic, but the Western diplomats seem to not watch the Arab TV channels. There is an organization called Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) which is dedicated to monitoring Palestinian news sources and translating them from Arabic to English/Hebrew. It would have done John Kerry a great deal of good to have watched some of their clippings before blindly throwing himself into trying to force the Israelis and Palestinians to come to an agreement.
So when will there be a state of Palestine? The truth is this will only occur when the Palestinians’ desire to create their own state is greater than their desire to destroy the only Jewish state.
The onus however is not completely on the Palestinians. In order for there to be true peace, some Israelis will have to give up their dream of a Greater Israel, although in reality the majority of Israelis gave up on this dream quite some time ago. The Palestinians, however, still dream of Haifa and Jaffa. Those who are realistic know that they will never control Haifa or Jaffa again, but those people seem to be very much in the minority.
It is for this very reason that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has insisted that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state, as opposed to part of what many view as Zionist-controlled “Palestine.” If the Palestinians do not recognize Israel as a Jewish state, there will never be a true end to the conflict even if a Palestinian state is created in Gaza and the majority of the West Bank in the future.
Once the majority of Palestinians and their leadership accept the fact that after thousands of years of persecution, the Jewish people will not give up the State of Israel, there can be genuine progress toward the creation of a Palestinian state and a true, lasting peace. Until then, there will be continual breakdowns of whatever talks the Israelis are forced into again and the ever elusive Israeli-Palestinian peace will remain just that – elusive.
Abbas: Why Would Israel Reject Palestinian Arab Unity Government?: Jewish Press, June 1, 2014—Hamas and the PLO will announce their Unity Government on Monday, June 2, according to Palestinian Arab media outlet Ma’an.
Netanyahu Urges World Not to Recognise Palestinian Unity Government: Jeffrey Heller, Reuters, June 1, 2014—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Sunday against any international rush to recognize a Palestinian government due to be announced under a unity pact between the Fatah and Hamas Islamist groups.
In Ottawa, a Taxpayer-Funded Tribute to a Palestinian Terrorist: Karen James, National Post, May 30, 2014—Stephen Spielberg’s 2005 film Munich opens with a group of young athletes returning to the Olympic Village late at night.
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