Last ditch attempts to mediate between Fatah and Hamas appear to have failed, reports Khalid Amayreh from the West Bank Qatari Foreign Minister Hamad Bin Jassem Bin Jaber al-Thani's mediation efforts have failed to bridge the gap between the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Palestinian Hamas government led by Prime Minister Ismael Haniya. Al-Thani arrived in the Gaza Strip via the Rafah border crossing Monday evening with a "fresh set of proposals" which he hoped would resolve the deadlock between Hamas and Fatah, particularly over the central issue of recognising Israel, and lead to the lifting of suffocating American-led sanctions. Though unwilling to formally recognise Israel, Hamas has said repeatedly that it is willing to observe an extended truce with the Zionist state in return for Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967. The Qatari foreign minister, who held separate meetings with President Mahmoud Abbas and Haniya on Monday night, appears to have failed to win Hamas acceptance of his proposals. Sources say al-Thani had intended to meet jointly with Abbas and Haniya to discuss the formation of a new Palestinian government. Disagreements between the two sides are now so stark, though, that the meeting was impossible to arrange. The crux of the six-point Qatari plan, sources say, centres on the formation of a national unity government headed by an independent figure but including ministers from Hamas, Fatah and other factions as well as independents. Al-Thani met with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Damascus last week in an attempt to convince him to accept the Qatari initiative which obliges Hamas to accept all outstanding agreements between Israel and the PLO as well as all UN resolutions pertaining to the Arab- Israeli conflict. The proposals do not, however, address the problems likely to emerge between the new government and the Hamas-dominated Legislative Council to which it would be answerable and that could, if and when it recognised Israel, vote the government down. While Mashaal has yet to give a final answer to the Qataris, it is unlikely that Hamas would accept the initiative as it stands. Abbas, speaking to reporters in Gaza on Monday, struck an optimistic note though the consensus is that a government of national unity is further away than ever. "The Qatari initiative has not failed. Dialogue is progressing with the mediation of the Qatari foreign minister, we are still on our way," said Abbas. Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Al-Zahar was also quoted as saying that "the Qatari initiative posed no harm to Palestinian national principles." Yet it is clear the two sides remain diametrically opposed over the issue of recognising Israel. There are growing signs that any trust remaining between Hamas and Abbas has been shattered following the Palestinian president's freezing of a draft agreement with Hamas over the creation of a national unity government. According to Hamas, Abbas had accepted the broad guidelines of the agreement, based on the National Conciliation Document, before leaving for the United States, but under pressure from the American administration he reneged on that commitment. It was a case of tit-for-tat accusations: in the US Abbas accused Hamas of being the first to renege on the agreement, warning that he might make recourse to his constitutional powers, a none too veiled allusion to the possibility that he might dissolve the government and parliament and call for new elections. On Friday, 6 October, Haniya gave a defiant speech in downtown Gaza before hundreds of thousands of flag-waving supporters. Haniya, who during the course of the speech appeared at one point to faint from exhaustion, vowed that Hamas would never recognise the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation. The beleaguered premier did, however, repeat that Hamas would be willing to accept the creation of a viable Palestinian state on 100 per cent of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem and accept an extended hudna, or truce, with Israel. Haniya hinted that the PA leadership was being bullied by the Americans to abandon the National Conciliation Document and adopt in its place the Quartet's dictates which include recognition of Israel. "We never sought to sabotage any prospective agreement to form a government of national unity. The opposite is true. We are still looking for genuine talks with the president to complete consultation in this regard," he said. Haniya condemned "acts of lawlessness and vandalism" by elements within Fatah, asking "what such acts of vandalism, lawlessness and murder have to do with a strike over unpaid salaries." "Where else in the world is a strike enforced by machine guns?" he asked, alluding to Sunday's (1 October) bloody showdown between Fatah-affiliated security personnel and the government-backed Executive Force which left 12 people dead. The disturbances later spread to the West Bank where Fatah activists ransacked and burned government buildings in Ramallah, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage. Should the Qatari foreign minister's initiative fail, and few hold out much hope for its success, a showdown between Fatah and Hamas is almost inevitable. According to Fatah sources close to Abbas, the Palestinian president will wait until the end of Ramadan to see if a new government emerges. If not he is likely to take "radical" measures, including dissolving the government and even parliament. But there are problems. Once new elections are called there are no guarantees that Fatah will perform any better than it did in the last election. Nor is Hamas expected to accept Abbas's decisions without putting up a struggle of some sort, particularly in the Gaza Strip. Few anticipate that the movement will cede power quite so easily. One possible scenario is that the Palestinians end up with two governments, a Hamas-led administration in the Gaza Strip and a Fatah government in the West Bank. Given the seemingly irreconcilable gap between Hamas and Fatah over the issue of recognising Israel, and the growing crisis looming over Palestinian society as a result of Israeli and American insistence that the draconian sanctions, which have already pushed large sectors of the Palestinian population towards the brink of starvation, be maintained, such an outcome is all too feasible. (see p.5)
