Updates

Update from AIJAC

May 1, 2014
Number 05/14 #01

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement agreed to a unity deal with Hamas, which rules Gaza, last week – an agreement which appeared to rule out an extension of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks whose scheduled end-date was Wednesday. This Update deals with the details, background, and implications of the deal, as well as the motivations of the players involved. 

First up is an excellent backgrounder by top Israeli journalist and author Ehud Yaari, writing together with Washington Institute for Near East Policy scholar Neri Zilber. Yaari and Zilber note that this new agreement is part of a framework of largely unimplemented Fatah-Hamas agreements over several years, and detail how this new deal fails to resolve key issues which prevented the previous agreements from coming to fruition. They stress that both sides benefit from the appearance of reconciliation but that considerable barriers remain to actual unity, and this looks like an effort by Abbas and Hamas to gain political leverage in various ways, rather than a serious effort to end their bitter dispute. For all the details of their analysis, CLICK HERE. Another good backgrounder on the agreement comes from BICOM.

Next up, veteran Palestinian Affairs journalist Khaled Abu Toameh looks in more detail at the motivations of Mahmoud Abbas for making this agreement. Abu Toameh says there is no sign of Hamas moderation and he sees Abbas’ action primarily in terms of finding a new way to exert pressure on the US and Israeli government to meet Palestinian demands. He argues that Abbas perceives a US pattern of offering him a major new initiative whenever he makes a dramatic move, and the PA leader is now “waiting to see what the U.S. Administration will offer him in return for rescinding his plan to join forces with Hamas.” For the rest of Abu Toameh’s argument, CLICK HERE. Meanwhile, left-leaning Israel author and columnist Ari Shavit argues Abbas’ dramatic recent moves are actually no surprise as the Palestinian leader has in fact never shown any inclination to sign onto a compromise peace. 

Finally, David Horovitz, editor of the Times of Israel, takes on the myth that Fatah-Hamas unity would be good for Israel because it would mean Israel would have a united Palestinian leadership to talk to and reach a peace deal with. He says this would be true if Hamas was agreeing to meet long-standing international community demands to recognize Israel, to renounce terrorism and to respect previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements, but there is absolutely no indication that they are doing so. He argues what is actually going on is that Abbas has been engaging in “willful weakness” – deliberately placing himself in a position where he cannot reach a compromise peace – this deal is the latest example of this, and it assists the extremists. For Horovitz’s provocative analysis in full, CLICK HERE.

Readers may also be interested in:

• Israeli Cabinet Minister and head of the centrist Yesh Atid party Yair Lapid explains why he believes Israel has no choice but to suspect talks with the Palestinians in the wake of the Fatah-Hamas deal. Also, Israeli author David Hazony discusses Israel’s quandary in facing Hamas given its rejectionism.
• Israel was reportedly shocked by the Fatah-Hamas deal announcement, which came the day after a meeting which providing considerable optimism that an agreement would be struck to extend Israeli Palestinian talks. Israel had been reportedly prepared to offer a freeze on new construction in settlements, as well as agreement to discuss the borders of a Palestinian state, as part of the deal.
• Noted Israeli security columnist Ron Ben Yishai argues the deal benefits Hamas more than Fatah. Plus, Dore Gold on the myth of Hamas moderation.
• Hamas leaders insist the deal with Fatah does not change their rejectionist policy here and here. More on Hamas’ likely future plans under the deal here. Plus, a Fatah leader joins Hamas in calling for Israel’s destruction, while Fatah’s military wing calls for “armed resistance.”
• American columnist Richard Cohen says Hamas needs to rescind their openly antisemitic charter to be considered a potential peace partner.
• Isi Leibler gives his take on the Fatah-Hamas deal. Other important  and knowledgeable comments on the deal come from Palestinian politics experts Jonathan Schanzer and Pinhas Inbari, columnist  Smadar Perry, legal analyst Alan Baker, scholar David Pollack, former senior US official Elliot Abrams and journalist Shmuel Rosner.
• Historian Prof.  Efraim Karsh explains recent Palestinian actions in the context of a long history of avoiding approaching a deal that would give them statehood in exchange for making peace with Israel. Meanwhile, analyst Michael Rubin recommends a rethink of the basic logic of the peace process in the wake of recent events.
• Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who many years ago wrote a controversial academic thesis questioning the scope of the Holocaust and alleging Zionist complicity in it, made a statement last week acknowledging the Holocaust as the “most heinous crime to have occurred against humanity”. Palestinian Media Watch reports on the relative rarity of such statements from Palestinian official sources and also documents how the latest Holocaust memorial day saw Israel strongly compared to Nazi Germany in the Palestinian media.
• Among those arguing that, in context, Abbas statement may not be as positive as it initially looks include Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff, Jonathan Tobin, Israeli columnist Nadav Shragai, blogger Elder of Ziyon, and German scholar Petra Marquardt-Bigman.
• However, in the wake of criticism of a group of Palestinian students visiting Auschwitz, two Palestinians, participant in the trip  Zeina Barakat and journalist Nazir Mgally, argue for the importance of Holocaust education for Palestinians. However, a Jordanian writer, Dr. Ibrahim Alloush, argues it is even more dangerous to recognise the Holocaust, which he consider a lie, than it is to recognise Israel’s right to exist.
  
• Some examples from the many stories and comments now appearing at AIJAC’s daily “Fresh AIR” blog:
  • AIJAC’s submission in response to the government’s exposure draft intended to replace section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, designed to provide recourse for victims of racist harassment, intimidation or vilification. 
  • Colin Rubenstein in the Australian Financial Review on the real reasons for the breakdown in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. 
  • Colin Rubenstein also had a response to former Foreign Minister Bob Carr’s comments about the supposedly “unhealthy” influence of the pro-Israel lobby published in the Australian.

The Hamas-Fatah Reconciliation Agreement: Too Early to Judge

Ehud Yaari and Neri Zilber

PolicyWatch 2243
April 24, 2014

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What Is Abbas Trying to Achieve?

by Khaled Abu Toameh

Gatestone Institute, April 25, 2014 at 5:00 am

Palestinian Authority [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas has once again surprised Israel and the U.S. Administration, this time by signing a “reconciliation” agreement with Hamas.

On April 23, Abbas dispatched a high-level delegation of PLO officials to the Gaza Strip to sign the “historic” deal with Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.

The deal calls for the formation of a Palestinian unity government, headed by Abbas, within five weeks.

Six months after the creation of the new government, according to the agreement, the Palestinians would hold presidential and parliamentary elections.

Abbas’s decision to join forces with Hamas is seen as a tactical move aimed at putting pressure on Israel and the U.S. to accept his conditions for extending the peace talks after their April 29 deadline.

Despite the signing ceremony, however, held at the home of Haniyeh, the gap between Abbas’s Fatah faction and Hamas remains as wide as ever.

There are no indications whatsoever that, as a result of the rapprochement with Fatah, Hamas is about to change its ideology or abandon terrorism.

Nor is there any sign that Hamas is willing to allow the Palestinian Authority security forces to return to the Gaza Strip, which fell into the hands of the Islamist movement in 2007.

Hamas leaders and spokesmen have made it clear that the “reconciliation” agreement does not mean that Hamas will abandon the path of terrorism to achieve its goals. “The option of negotiations has failed,” said Ra’fat Murra, a Hamas official in Lebanon. “Palestinian resistance remains the right option.”

Ibrahim Hamami, a Palestinian writer closely associated with Hamas, said he does not believe that a reconciliation with “Israel’s agents” [Abbas and the PA] is possible. “There should be no meetings or reconciliation with the traitors and collaborators,” he said.

This week’s “reconciliation” agreement is not about ending the Hamas-Fatah dispute so much as it is about exerting pressure on the Israeli government and the U.S. Administration.

Neither Hamas nor Fatah is interested in sharing power or sitting in the same government.

The “reconciliation” agreement is just the latest in a series of moves taken by Abbas since the eruption of the crisis in the peace talks a few weeks ago. Abbas’s moves started with the application to join 15 international treaties, and continued with threats to resign and dissolve the Palestinian Authority.

These moves, like the “reconciliation” agreement with Hamas, have all caught Israel and the U.S. Administration by surprise.

Abbas has concluded that the U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, is so desperate to achieve a peace agreement between the Palestinians and Israelis that he will be willing to do almost anything to salvage the peace process.

Abbas apparently did not feel that the U.S. Administration was completely opposed to his decision to file requests to join 15 international treaties. Nor, apparently, did he sense a serious response from Washington to his threats to resign and dismantle the Palestinian Authority.

That is why he has now decided to put the U.S. Administration to the test by signing a “historic” agreement with Hamas — one that Abbas himself knows is unlikely to materialize.

Abbas does not seem worried at all over Israel’s decision to suspend the peace talks with the Palestinian Authority. In fact, he was expecting a harsh response from Israel. But he knows that Israel’s measures would be limited and that Israel has no interest in bringing about the collapse of the Palestinian Authority.

He would be far more worried if the U.S. Administration actually came out in full force against the agreement with Hamas. Abbas’s biggest fear is that the U.S. will cut off financial aid to the Palestinian Authority and work toward isolating him, as the Bush Administration did to Yasser Arafat in 2002.

Also, Abbas wants the U.S. to continue to play the role of the major mediator in the conflict with Israel because he is aware that neither the Europeans nor the Russians nor the Chinese will be able to replace American sponsorship.

Abbas is convinced that it is only a matter of time before Kerry or top U.S. diplomats rush to Ramallah to try to persuade him not to make peace with Hamas.

Abbas seems to be enjoying that each time he does something dramatic, the U.S. Administration launches another big diplomatic offensive to convince him to backtrack. In a way, he appears to be enjoying humiliating the largest superpower. Abbas wants his people and the Arabs to see him as hero who can stand up to the Americans.

Abbas is now waiting to see what the U.S. Administration will offer him in return for rescinding his plan to join forces with Hamas. When this happens, Abbas will most probably come up with new demands and conditions, just as he has been doing during these past few weeks.

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Abbas embraces the Islamists

Wednesday’s superficial unity deal — between rival Palestinian factions that thoroughly loathe each other — was the PA leader’s latest act of willful weakness. It’s bad news for everyone bar the extremists

By David Horovitz

Times of Israel, April 24, 2014

This is good news for Israel, a foreign TV journalist suggested to me on Thursday morning. It has always been a problem that Israel was negotiating with “the moderate” Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas over a Palestinian state in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza, while Gaza was actually run by the uncompromising Islamists of Hamas. Now, surely, since Wednesday’s “historic” Fatah-Hamas reconciliation deal, the reporter posited, Abbas is at the helm of a unified Palestinian hierarchy and the talks can make progress in earnest.

Well, no.

Had the reconciliation deal, reached with such extraordinary speed in Gaza on Wednesday, included clauses specifying a commitment by Hamas to recognize Israel, to renounce terrorism and to respect previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements — thus meeting the Middle East Quartet’s longstanding demands of would-be peace process participants — there might have been some mileage in the “good news for Israel” argument. But the Fatah-Hamas deal specified nothing of the sort. Quite the reverse. When announcing the agreement, Hamas’s Gaza prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, far from expressing an improbable new desire to enter talks with the Zionist enemy, restated his organization’s consistent position that the peace process with Israel does not serve Palestinian strategic interests.

For Hamas to have accepted the international quartet’s conditions, indeed, would have required it to undergo a reversal of its ideology and policy so complete as to render it no longer Hamas. Obviously, that didn’t happen on Wednesday, and nor is it going to happen in the weeks and months ahead. The Palestinian shift we are observing is not one of Hamas undergoing moderation — its interpretation of Islam will never countenance the existence of a Jewish state — but of Abbas’s Fatah willingly submitting itself to the bear hug of the Islamic extremists.

Abbas has proved himself a leader inclined to revel in his weakness. He’s not set out to destroy Israel. He hasn’t sought to foster terrorism against Israel, unlike his unlamented predecessor. But neither has he been prepared to work energetically to create a climate among his people in favor of the compromises necessary for Palestinian statehood alongside, and peace with, Israel. He’s not reined in the toxic anti-Israel orientation of the Palestinian media. He’s not revolutionized the Palestinian education system. He’s hailed evil men and women who have murdered Israelis, extorted their releases from Israel’s jails as his price for consenting to negotiate with Israel, and welcomed them home as heroes. He’s placed the fate of his people in the hands of other regional leaders and organizations such as the Arab League, rather than taking direct responsibility. He’s no Anwar Sadat, no King Hussein.

Six years ago, he chose to pass up prime minister Ehud Olmert’s unprecedented peace offer — Gaza, the West Bank with one-for-one land swaps, a shared Jerusalem. It was everything the Palestinians ostensibly want from Israel, and he spurned it. Today, a very weary 79, he’s facing a far less generous Israeli leader. The prospects of the man who said no to Ehud Olmert reaching terms with Benjamin Netanyahu were always spectacularly slim to nil. As of Wednesday, nil.

Israel could have done more to encourage him. Notably, it could have declaredly halted settlement expansion in areas it does not intend to keep under any conceivable accord. But it’s highly unlikely that this would have made the critical difference. Abbas simply was not willing to tackle the profound anti-Israel sentiment among his people, and was certainly not prepared to risk his own well-being, for the noble, high-risk cause of a negotiated path to statehood.

Wednesday’s superficial unity deal — the new incarnation of an on-off partnership between rival Palestinian factions that thoroughly loathe each other — was Abbas’s latest act of willful weakness. He is escaping the deeply uncomfortable pressure to compromise with Israel and instead embracing a veneer of Palestinian unity. It was also an act that underlined the impotence of the American interlocutors, whose warnings against an alliance with Hamas were blithely ignored.

Terribly, it opens the path to a possible deterioration into more of the violence that blighted all of our lives a decade ago. It likely marks the start of an intensified Palestinian effort to demonize Israel on the world stage, with the international community unlikely to need much persuading that Netanyahu is the architect of all our region’s misfortune.

Good news for Israel? Anything but. Good news for nobody but the extremists.

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