Editorial
Fatah, Hamas come together
Spirit of unity should produce result
It is certainly the best piece of news Palestinians have had in a long time. The willingness on the part of Fatah and Hamas to come together in the interest of unity holds forth, even though it has been late in coming, the imperatives before the Palestinians. In these past few years especially, the concept of a free state of Palestine has repeatedly been subjected to assaults by Israel and, ironically, by the disunity of the Palestinian leadership itself. The kind of democratic politics which a few years ago seemed promising for the region simply went into reverse when an elected Hamas government was dismissed. In 2007, the seizure of political control in Gaza by Hamas, with Fatah retaining authority in the rest of Palestinian territory, only darkened an already murky situation.
That it took the two leading Palestinian political forces four years to come to an understanding on the formation of a transitional unity government is surprising, given that the absence of such unity in the last four years has emboldened the hawkish Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu in giving short shrift to all Palestinian demands made by the government of Mahmoud Abbas. The unity which has now formally been announced cannot have pleased the Israelis. The Netanyahu government has made it unabashedly clear that Fatah must make a choice between peace with Hamas and peace with Israel. That is the height of absurdity. The Israelis have till now spurned every Palestinian offer of a reasonable settlement and have never seen it necessary to call a halt to new Jewish settlements on Palestinian territory. Such an attitude not only undermined Abbas but also helped increase public support for the radical views of Hamas.
The Fatah-Hamas understanding should, despite Israeli discomfiture at the move, lead to a detailed road map to elections in Palestine as well as a national consensus on the nature of a future Palestinian state. For Israel and its supporters in the West, the unity move should, more than being a warning, be an opportunity for a serious getting down to the business of making peace in the Middle East.
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