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Israel moved against the reconciliation agreement between the Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas on Sunday, with the country’s finance minister saying he would delay the transfer of tax funds collected for the Palestinian Authority until it proves the money will not reach Hamas.
The minister, Yuval Steinitz, said that he had postponed meetings between his staff and Palestinian officials and that the tax transfers, which constitute most of the authority’s revenue, would be put on hold until the destination of the money is clarified.
Hamas officials on Saturday denied reports that its top leaders are planning to move from Syria and relocate to Qatar or another Arab country.
“The leadership will remain there," said Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan. "As far as I know, we were not told to move to any other country.”
The London-based Alhayat newspaper reported Saturday that the Syrian government demanded Hamas leaders, who have been based in Damascus for about a decade, leave. The newspaper said that Qatar had agreed to receive the movement’s politburo leader, Khaled Mashaal.
As spring breaks out for Palestinian unity, winter arrives for the Middle East peace process.
The prospective Hamas-Fatah unity agreement was driven primarily by domestic politics: Both of these long-term rivals are seeking to energize their bases, preempt discontent on the streets and dangle the always-attractive illusion of Arab unity before their constituents.
Israel froze $88 million in Palestinian funds Sunday, elevating tensions over an Egyptian initiative to broker a power-sharing agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority and raising new concerns about the prospects for peace in the region.
Delegates from Palestinian factions in Gaza left the coastal enclave Monday through the Rafah crossing en route to Cairo for meetings ahead of the signing of a reconciliation agreement.
The delegates are expected in Cairo on Monday afternoon, where they will join Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader in exile Khalid Mash'al, who arrived earlier in the week.
Egyptian authorities at the Rafah crossing told Ma'an early Monday that they were prepared to receive and welcome the delegations from Gaza to Egypt.
Hamas leader in exile Khalid Mash'al arrived in Cairo Sunday night as head of a delegation from his Islamist party, Al-Jazeera reported, ahead of a meeting with President Mahmoud Abbas who arrived in the Egyptian capital earlier in the week.
The two are expected to sign a historic unity document and set of guiding implementation principals that will reunify the governments of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Abbas and Mash'al, along with their respective delegations, will meet Monday for a series of talks ahead of the signing.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil al-Arabi on Sunday called on the United States to recognize a Palestinian state, as rival Palestinian factions prepare to sign a reconciliation accord in Cairo.
Arabi urged visiting US Congressman Steve Chabot to "press Congress and the American administration to recognise a Palestinian state."
Recognition "would correspond with previous statements by the American administration supporting peace based on two states," the official MENA news agency quoted him as saying.
Renowned Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim will lead a "peace concert" by an orchestra of European musicians on Tuesday in the Gaza Strip, a United Nations agency said on Monday.
The rare concert was announced in a statement by the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East peace process, and will take place on Tuesday afternoon at Al-Mathaf Cultural House in Gaza City.
Barenboim, an outspoken proponent of peace between Israel and the Palestinians, said he was delighted to be going to Gaza for the concert.
"We are very happy to come to Gaza," he said in the UN statement.
A Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip says the Islamic militant group has no plans to dismantle its security forces or end its struggle against Israel after a new Palestinian unity government is formed this week.
Hamas and the rival Fatah movement are set to sign a unity deal in Cairo on Wednesday. The plan seeks to end a 4-year-old rift that has left the Palestinians divided between a Western-leaning government in the West Bank and the Hamas regime in Gaza.
The plan calls for elections next year but is vague about the future of rival security forces or using violence against Israel.
Israeli officials remained close- mouthed Monday after Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz announced a day earlier a decision to freeze the transfer of tax revenues to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) following the reconciliation accord between Fatah and Hamas.
Steinitz, along with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and many other senior Israeli officials, have slammed the interim unity government deal reached between Hamas and the Fatah-ruled PNA last week in Cairo, and vowed not to negotiate with Hamas, which Israel maintains is a terrorist organization.
Amid ongoing Palestinian efforts to unilaterally obtain recognition of statehood in the United Nations in September, members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud-led cabinet are reiterating calls for Israel to respond with a unilateral annexation of the West Bank.
"If they take steps, we will take steps. I think that we need to immediately annex all of the territories on the same day (the UN declares the establishment of Palestine)," Welfare and Communications Minister Moshe Kahlon told an audience at a meeting of the Likud's young leadership forum on April 28.
The Egyptian government's recent decision to open the Rafah border crossing point, the only land route into the Gaza Strip that doesn't pass through the Israeli territory, has left Israel scrambling for a response.
Following the Hamas takeover of Gaza in June 2007, Israel has imposed a land and maritime blockade on the enclave.
The Western-backed Palestinian Authority said on Monday the killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces was "good for the cause of peace,"
"Getting rid of Bin Laden is good for the cause of peace worldwide but what counts is to overcome the discourse and the methods -- the violent methods -- that were created and encouraged by Bin Laden and others in the world," PA spokesman Ghassan Khatib said.
Palestinian Authority Prime Minster Salam Fayyad on Sunday urged foreign powers to intervene after Israel froze the transfer of tens of millions of dollars in Palestinian tax money following the formation of a Hamas-Fatah unity government.
"Threats ... will not deter us from concluding our reconciliation process. It is our policy and we must work harder to end our divisions as soon as possible," added Fayyad.
What do they have in common - the hawks of Iz al-Din al-Qassam, the military wing of Hamas; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; his bodyguard, Defense Minister Ehud Barak; and Nobel Peace Prize laureate President Shimon Peres ? They all threw a fit over the reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas.
As someone who considers herself to be a conservative journalist, I make an effort to refrain from reporting about what will happen in the future. Too many headlines, in my opinion, are about what so-and-so will say and what the fate of so-and-so will be. In the face of competition from the Internet and television, the printed press, afraid of becoming irrelevant, is often forced into making predictions. "I forgot my crystal ball at home" - is how I respond to the question "What will be?" I prefer to focus on what has been done and been said today and yesterday.
Hamas on Monday condemned the killing by US forces of Osama bin Laden and mourned him as an "Arab holy warrior" while Iran condemned "Zionist terror" and a US national security official told Reuters the mission of the special forces team that hunted down the terrorist had been to kill him.
"This was a kill operation," the official said, making clear there was no desire to try to capture bin Laden alive in Pakistan.
The chief of a Fatah delegation to truce talks with Hamas, Azzam al-Ahmed, denied in an interview the New York Times that Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad would not be continuing in office.
He said the Cairo talks regarding the truce agreement had not focused at all on members of the transition government.
The Palestinian Authority’s announcement that a reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas had been signed in Cairo prompted an immediate response from the government. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu issued the following statement: “The Palestinian Authority must choose between peace with Israel and peace with Hamas. There cannot be peace with both since Hamas aims to destroy Israel and says so openly.”
After years of unsuccessful lobbying by the Egyptian authorities for a reconciliation of the warring Palestinian factions, the post-Mubarak government has achieved a breakthrough. As Moussa Abu Marzouk, deputy head of the Hamas politburo, said on Thursday, a new page has been turned.
The emergence of a reconciliation deal between Hamas and Fatah on Wednesday took most observers by surprise, but behind the scenes a new cast of players had been moving the relevant pieces into place ever since a popular revolution ousted the Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.
The accord struck between Fatah and Hamas that could end a bitter four-year feud will please a Palestinian public longing for a united leadership.
Thousands in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and the Fatah-dominated West Bank rallied last month to demand that their leaders act, "with one hand". Their protests appear to have succeeded.
The factions, after mediation by Egypt's transitional government, agreed on Wednesday to form an interim authority until elections are held within a year. Then, many hope, the Palestinians will once again fall under one government.
Sometimes you can almost physically feel the political earth shifting beneath your feet. One of those moments occurred in Cairo a few days ago, when the main Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, signed an Egyptian-brokered reconciliation agreement to reconstitute a single Palestinian government.
The nascent Palestinian reconciliation, to be consummated next Wednesday in Cairo, is a welcome step that should result in a unified and stronger push for statehood led by the right group – a united Palestinian people.
They in the West have a thing for opinion polls. In the latest of its opinion polls, the US-based Pew Research Center reports that views about the US in the Arab world remain as negative as ever despite the arrival of President Barack Obama and all the impossible dreams and sweet promises he offered before and after his election. Interestingly, the Pew researchers note with dismay, even after the recent apocalyptic events in the Middle East, there has been no remarkable change in people’s perceptions about Uncle Sam.
Links:
[1] http://www.americantaskforce.org/print/18801
[2] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printmail/18801
[3] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printpdf/18801
[4] http://www.americantaskforce.org/rss/wpr
[5] https://www.americantaskforce.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=1
[6] http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/israel-suspends-tax-transfers-to-palestinians-out-of-concern-money-would-go-to-hamas/2011/05/01/AFsTYFTF_story.html
[7] http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2011/04/gaza-strip-hamas-leadership-says-it-will-remain-in-syria.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BabylonBeyond+%28Babylon+%26+Beyond+Blog%29
[8] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-01/hamas-fatah-hug-creates-illusion-of-unity-aaron-david-miller.html
[9] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704436004576296990740295406.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsForth
[10] http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=383942
[11] http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=383819
[12] http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=383809
[13] http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5inSBbDaCOCPCYKtgFh4ui5rJ6kCQ?docId=CNG.b74138877e2c6db836a76c96669b7602.1b1
[14] http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/hamas-leader-we-will-maintain-security-in-gaza-1447918.html
[15] http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-05/02/c_13855378.htm
[16] http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-05/02/c_13854443.htm
[17] http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-05/02/c_13854442.htm
[18] http://www.haaretz.com/news/international/palestinians-bin-laden-s-death-is-good-for-the-cause-of-peace-1.359375
[19] http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/fayyad-urges-international-intervention-over-israeli-freeze-on-palestinian-taxes-1.359171
[20] http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/palestinian-reconciliation-is-good-news-for-mideast-peace-1.359278
[21] http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/palestinian-reconciliation-may-lead-to-israel-s-palestinian-separation-1.359276
[22] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4063407,00.html
[23] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4062124,00.html
[24] http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=218707
[25] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/28/egypt-revolution-players-palestinian-pieces
[26] http://www.thenational.ae/news/worldwide/middle-east/agreement-increases-pressure-on-israel
[27] http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Apr/30/Sanity-returns-Egypt-to-the-Arab-fold.ashx#axzz1LC7wQ0ue
[28] http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Apr/30/Palestine-united.ashx#axzz1LC7wQ0ue
[29] http://arabnews.com/opinion/editorial/article379443.ece
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