Pre-empting
Arab Mediation
In Palestinian Divide
By Nicola Nasser
26 December, 2006
Countercurrents.org
The
U.S administration and Israel are accelerating their coordinated meddling
in the internal Palestinian divide between the Fatah-led presidency
and the Hamas-led government to pre-empt a series of Arab mediation
efforts, the latest of which is a UAE-Syrian try according to a member
of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO).
The PLO official, who preferred to remain anonymous, said that President
Mahmoud Abbas authorized the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to negotiate
with Syria on behalf of Hamas, whose politburo chairman, Khaled Misha’al,
is based in Damascus, a draft for forming a Palestinian national unity
government on the basis of the national consensus document (the prisoners’
document), recognizing the PLO by Hamas, and respecting the accords
signed by the PLO with Israel.
However the undeclared UAE-Syrian effort-in-the-offing seems to have
been overtaken by the latest Israeli-U.S. moves to foil Arab mediation.
Faced practically with choosing between national unity and lifting the
Israeli-U.S. siege, the PLO leadership has opted to give priority to
the second option, a choice that led it to voluntarily accept bypassing
the Palestinian government by visiting western leaders and diplomats,
to turn a blind eye to the western diplomatic boycott imposed on this
government and to receive selective “humanitarian aid” through
the PA presidency.
Within this context Abbas met with the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
in Jerusalem on Saturday in a long-awaited summit, during which Olmert
only “promised” to release $100 million out of more than
$600 million illegally held by Israel as a “humanitarian”
gesture, but failed to agree on a prisoner swap and deferred to joint
committees the Palestinian demands of releasing some of more than 10.0000
Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails -- including the Speaker of the
Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) and more then 60 cabinet ministers
and lawmakers -- the easing of West Bank travel military restrictions
and increasing the traffic through the main cargo crossing between Gaza
Strip and Israel.
The meager results of the meeting won’t lift or essentially alleviate
the year-long tight economic and financial siege. Expressing Moscow's
support for Abbas' efforts to resolve the crisis through national consensus,
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a press conference in Moscow
last week that foreign interests had “knowingly and deliberately
intervened to thwart the Palestinian dialogue on the formation of a
national unity government.”
The question now is not of getting the Israelis and Palestinians to
talk, but of getting the Palestinians to talk to each other so they
can talk to others.
Arab League Secretary General Amr Mousa canceled a plan for an emergency
meeting of Arab foreign ministers on Monday to resolve the inter-Palestinian
crisis after conferring with the Palestinian president. Abbas “told
me that there are mediations by some Arab states which may lead to a
result and progress in (solving) the Palestinian crisis,” he said.
The Palestinian unity government would be anathema to Israel and timing
of Olmert’s move and other U.S moves leave no doubts about their
aim to preclude Arab mediation, thwart the potential for a successful
Palestinian dialogue, and suggest reasons other than those mentioned
by Mousa and Abbas for shelving the Arab League plans.
Egypt, Qatar and Yemen are heavily involved in mediation with the rival
Palestinian factions. A Qatari mediation effort was foiled in October
by the PLO insistence on Hamas’ commitment to the Israeli-initiated,
U.S. and Quartet-adopted conditions.
The Israeli interest in “thwarting” Palestinian dialogue
is self-evident. However the U.S. “thwarting” efforts unilaterally
and through international forums need elaboration. On Thursday, President
George W. Bush signed the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act barring direct
U.S. aid to the “Hamas-controlled Palestinian Authority”
(PA) as long as Hamas refuses to recognize Israel, renounce violence
and recognize existing agreements.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is expected in Israel and the
PA in January, said she would ask the Congress for $100 million to “strengthen
the security forces” of the PA loyal to Abbas; but strengthen
these forces against whom?
Also as part of western efforts to shore up Abbas and further tighten
siege on Hamas, the Quartet of the U.S., the U.N., the EU and Russia
has backed the continuation for three months of the Temporary International
Mechanism to provide aid directly to the Palestinian people by bypassing
the Hamas-led Government.
Hamas considers forming a national unity government the right approach
to lifting the siege, and not vice versa. Without consensus and prior
consultation, the Islamic Resistance Movement fears a crackdown in Abbas’
call on December 16 for early presidential and legislative election
and has welcomed and invited Arab mediation efforts to alleviate its
fears, which are vindicated by the Israeli and U.S. incessant calls
on Abbas to dismantle it or pressure it into accepting the Israeli conditions,
which the Quartet adopted as preconditions to lift the siege.
Hamas is now insisting on Israeli reciprocity, an overdue Palestinian
demand and a principle that the PLO should have set as a precondition
since Israel showed its bad faith when it sliced Jerusalem out of the
rest of the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 immediately after
signing the Declaration of Principles in Washington in 1993, but especially
after extremists in 1995 assassinated the Israelis’ hero of peace,
Yitzhak Rabin, which carried the right to power ever since.
The PLO has demilitarized to more than 90%, according to Abbas, the
six-year old Intifada, and practically brought the demilitarized uprising
to a standstill too, while incessantly repeating its willingness to
immediately go into unconditional negotiations with the Israel.
Late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat led the PLO and his Fatah movement
to a mutual recognition with Israel, renounced violence and revoked
the Palestinian National Charter, and reinforced the autonomy of the
PA, which he got in return, with “state security courts”
in order to swiftly punish the “enemies of peace” with Israel;
in 1996 more than 2000 of those “enemies of peace” were
imprisoned and tortured. His successor Abbas condemned their violent
anti-occupation resistance as terrorist acts.
Both men received nothing in return for all their “good will.”
They were disavowed as no partners in the deadlocked peace process.
Israel besieged Arafat in his own office in the West Bank town of Ramallah
for three years until his death on November 11, 2004, suspiciously by
poison. Their signed accords were all violated by Israel who reoccupied
their autonomous gains as the Israeli state terrorism against their
people continue to this day unabated, rendering all their peace endeavors
counterproductive and futile and leading to Hamas’ landslide electoral
victory.
For years, Israel had been leaving no stone unturned in its effort to
precipitate a Palestinian civil war. In the early days after the Oslo
Accord, it pressurized the Arafat to crack down on Hamas, but he did
not fall into the Israeli trap. Abbas also evaded falling into the trap
by insisting on dialogue to maneuver Hamas into ceasefire through joining
the political process, leading Israelis to accuse him of “dialogue
with terror,” and successfully averted infighting, but the tight
siege imposed on the PA since Hamas’ electoral victory in January
2006 seems to be loosening his resolve.
Should the US and Israel push the Hamas-led government to the wall,
they may trigger a third Palestinian Intifada, Misha’al had warned
in Cairo. Should the Palestinian divide be denied Arab mediation and
further fueled to slide into a civil war the Palestinian - Israeli peace
process would be deferred indefinitely and none in the proximity would
be spared the repercussions.
Mediation by marginal PLO factions, Egypt and the Organization of the
Islamic Conference (OIC) secured last week a ceasefire in the low key
infighting in the Gaza Strip, which claimed more than 325 lives and
more than 4,000 wounded in 2006, according to Abbas, but the national
dialogue is still deadlocked.
Under the pressures of the potential risks of an escalating Palestinian
crisis, King Abdullah II on Tuesday contravened Jordan's unannounced
boycott of the Hamas-led government, and in clear divergence from the
all-demanding declared policy of the country’s U.S. strategic
ally, invited Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh for a joint summit
in Amman, but his royal invitation has yet to be honored.
However the UAE’s and Syrian middle ground between Hamas and Fatah
and Palestinian presidency and government qualifies both countries for
a successful mediation.
Syrian President Bashar Al Assad arrived in the UAE on Dec. 18, flying
in from Yemen, and held three meetings with President Sheikh Khalifa
bin Zayed Al Nahyan; next day he met with his Russian counterpart Vladimir
Putin in Moscow and told reporters that “Syria backs the Palestinian
national unity through forming a Palestinian national unity government.”
Briefing reporters on the Russian vision on the Palestinian issue, President
Assad said, “in fact... The Russian vision on Palestine is a detailed,
objective and real vision and we fully agree with it… it is a
vision based on the Palestinians' unity.”
Assad's earlier talks in Yemen with President Ali Abdullah Saleh also
discussed mediating the Palestinian divide, two days after the arrival
in Sanaa of US assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs, David Welch,
for talks with President Saleh. “I'll leave it to President Saleh
to convey their views to President Assad,” Welch said. “They
know the views of the United States,” Asia Times online quoted
him as saying on Dec. 22.
Should the Bush administration reconsider its currently known “views”
of the Palestinian divide and engage Syria instead of alienating it,
as recommended by the Baker-Hamilton report, to initiate a U.S.-Syrian
understanding that could allow Damascus, hand in hand with Abu Dhabi,
to break through the Hamas-Fatah divide, history could be replayed to
avert a Palestinian civil war as it had put an end to the Lebanese civil
war in the seventies of the last century, and could potentially make
the resumption of the peace process closer than more remote on both
the Palestinian and Syrian tracks of peace talks with Israel.
Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Ramallah, West Bank
of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
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