Ever since Hamas
won a strong majority in the Palestinian Authority (PA) elections this past
January, the Bush administration has been in a difficult position.The Americans expected Hamas to either win a
minority and then form a coalition with the ruling Fatah, or, to have Fatah,
headed by the U.S.-backed Mahmoud Abbas, President of the PA, manage to scrape
a minority and govern on the basis of an informal coalition.Faced with Hamas’ majority, however, the Bush
administration, which had already declared the elections were conducted in a
free and fair manner, immediately tried to determine whether some form of
accommodation with Hamas was possible.
Within days of
the election results, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza
Rice spelled out the conditions under which the U.S.
would accept Hamas’ rule: acceptance of the existence of the State of Israel,
renunciation of violence and a commitment to abide by existing peace accords
brokered between Israel
and the Palestinians.The problem was
that Hamas was not interested in seeking an accommodation, and their
spokesperson responded to Rice’s proposals quite directly, noting that Israel
refused to recognize the sovereign right of the Palestinian people, end the
occupation and abide by existing UN resolutions, so there was no room for
compromise on the part of the Palestinian leadership.
The Americans
reacted swiftly, cutting off all aid to the Palestinian Authority and turning a
blind eye to Israel’s
campaign to entirely seal off Gaza
from the rest of the world.A report
published in the New York Times on
February 14 claimed that U.S.
and Israeli officials of the “highest level” met to discuss the possibility of
destroying Hamas through “starving the PA”.
Given that there
is no real economy within the occupied territories, the PA is almost entirely
dependent on a combination of aid and financial remissions from Palestinians
living abroad.Without aid and with
remunerations from the U.S.
made extremely difficult by the Americans’ position that American citizens or
residents could not send money to the PA because it is controlled by a
“terrorist organization”, the PA and its new Hamas government have been
virtually paralyzed.While Hamas
representatives have been touring the Arab world and visiting Russia and
countries in the EU pleading for aid, the PA still remains extremely week.Public service salaries have not been paid in
months, and Hamas, which rose to prominence in the occupied territories through
the provision of social services, now in government has not been able to
deliver.
In response Mahmoud Abbas, a President without a government, declared
that a document drafted by Hamas and Fatah prisoners being held in Israeli
jails, which calls for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel within
the 1967 borders, is what is needed to resolve the crisis facing the
Palestinians.
On June 5, Abbas
declared that Hamas either had to accept the document as drafted, or he would
bypass them and hold a referendum for Palestinians on whether they accept the
document or not.Then, three days later,
ignoring the democratically elected PA, Abbas convened a meeting of the
executive committee of the PLO (unelected), to authorize such a
referendum.
The week before
Abbas took this rather extraordinary move, the Israeli daily Ha’aretz reported Abbas asked Israel for
permission to increase his “presidential guard” from 2,000 to 10,000.According to Ha’aretz, Israel
agreed to this, as well as to the request that this expanded guard be armed by
a third, unnamed country.Israel’s
goal in allowing the transfer of weapons, a senior defence official told Ha’aretz, is “to enable [Abbas] to deal
with Hamas.”
While it is
still unclear if and when such a referendum will be held, there can be little
doubt that a large majority of Palestinians would vote in favour of the
creation of an independent state within 1967 borders.For over two decades now, the Palestinians
have accepted the two-state solution as a means to achieving their sovereign
rights as a people.For a few years
after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, the majority of Palestinians
thought this was possible.However,
after that first historic compromise, Palestinians have watched as Israel has expanded its illegal settlements,
built a wall cutting deep into the West Bank
and unilaterally redrawn the 1967 borders, all in the name of security.It is unlikely that, even with a 100 percent
vote in favour of Abbas’ document, the Israelis will suddenly declare the last
ten years of their expansionism null and void and accept the national rights of
the Palestinian people.
Far more likely
is that a referendum victory will give Abbas and his U.S. and Israeli-allies the pretext
they so desperately need to overthrow the democratically elected government of
the Palestinian Authority.This is a
very dangerous situation for the Palestinian people, one in which the
likelihood of civil war looms large.