Today's Situation

National unity Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Nor is it clear that Hamas will be ready to give up the critical interior ministry, which in effect is supposed to be the equivalent of a defense ministry, in charge of all the armed forces. Until now, PA President Abbas has kept control of most PA armed forces, while since January, when Hamas was elected, Hamas has installed Hamas-loyalists as armed forces under a Hamas interior minister. The new national unity government will have to resolve that issue.

The prevailing view in Jerusalem is that the national unity government is a transparent attempt by Hamas to circumvent the international embargo against it, which has driven the Palestinian Authority into bankruptcy since the Hamas was elected in January. It is also no less a transparent attempt by PA President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazin), to have something to show President Bush, whom he is supposed to meet in a few days, and the UN, where he is going for the annual opening of the General Assembly.

But it is probably too soon for Israel to be writing off the Hamas-Fateh government -- for one thing, it hasn’t even been formed yet (and there are questions about whether it will actually take shape. It has taken nearly eight months of talks to reach an agreement for such a unity government, now the nitty gritty work of negotiations between Hamas and Fateh over the composition of that government begins), and for another, Israel probably won’t be able to prevent Europe, at least, from releasing donor funds desperately needed in the territories to help the destitute Palestinian economy. True, Israel, and perhaps the U.S., will argue that Hamas is Hamas is Hamas -- terrorists. And unless they explicitly renounce violence, recognize the international agreements that the PLO signed with Israel, and recognize Israel, Israel will have nothing to do with any government in which they are partners.

Still, aside from making the demands for the explicit acceptance of the conditions, Israel will not have much response to the argument that the Hamas-Fateh agreement not only gives Abbas, whom Israel still says is a ‘good guy’ in the equation, authority to negotiate with Israel, but it also includes Hamas recognition of the 1967 borders. True, the Hamas government spokesman told Israel’s Army Radio this morning that Hamas would never recognize Israel. But he also said Hamas had no problem with Abbas negotiating a deal that gives the Palestinians a state in the 1967 borders, a foothold in Jerusalem for their capital and a solution to the refugee problem. What happens after that is anybody’s guess. Some say that if the Palestinians were to get all that they would be so busy making a state they wouldn’t have time for more warring against Israel. Others say that the Hamas would simply use the Palestinian state as a platform for more warring, since all of Palestine, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, is Islamic and Israel has no place here. When that was mentioned to the Hamas government spokesman this morning, he responded acerbically that members of Israel’s Likud party still sing the Betar anthem, which calls both sides of the Jordan River ‘mine,’ meaning Israel’s. But the spokesman refused to say that if the Palestinians did get a state in the 1967 borders, it would mean an ‘end to the conflict.’

Palestinian politics was on the back burner of Israeli interests this morning. The attack by four gunmen on the U.S. embassy in Damascus grabbed attention, as did a government meeting today meant to decide on the framework of the 2007 budget. An Israeli soldier was killed in a clash between Israeli troops and gunmen in Gaza, close to the border; Channel 10 report last night about yet another mysterious Olmert real estate deal in Jerusalem that reaped the prime minister -- then the mayor -- an inexplicably handsome profit; and the prime minister’s decision to name a former district court judge to head the ‘governmental’ (not judicial) probe into the management of the war against Hizbollah, were all of more interest to the Israeli media, which in general continues to advance the idea Israel ‘lost’ the war, and that Olmert and Peretz have no policies now other than political survival, which, the Israeli media seems to be saying, is a long shot, definitely for Peretz and probably for Olmert.

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