Hoping to end the strangulating US-Israeli blockade on Palestinian society, Hamas and Fatah agree to move ahead on a national unity government, reports Khaled Amayreh Palestinians, including nearly all political and resistance factions, have welcomed the prospect of the formation of a national unity government in the hope that it will succeed in overcoming the overwhelming present political-economic crisis facing Palestinian society. On 26 August, Fatah's Central Committee (FCC), following three days of intensive meetings and deliberations in the Jordanian capital Amman, backed the formation of a government of national unity with Hamas and other Palestinian factions. The FCC said such a government would strengthen Palestinian national standing and enhance coordination between Palestinian Authority (PA) institutions and the government. Fatah officials revealed that the movement, which holds around 45 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council (Hamas holds nearly 70), wouldn't insist that the next prime minister be a Fatah member. Fatah official and lawmaker Abdullah Abdullah said, "the important thing for Fatah is the formulation of a clear political programme that will take the Palestinians out of the present deadlock and put once again the Palestinian cause at the heart of international attention." Abdullah said PA President Mahmoud Abbas would exert all necessary efforts to form a government of national unity before the end of September when he is due to speak before the UN General Assembly. "The Arab group at the UN will present a political initiative in the Security Council for the purpose of ending the Arab-Israeli conflict. Hence, the president is keen to finish the formulation of the national unity government before delivering his speech at the UN where he would demonstrate to the world that Palestinians are united in their quest for peace and justice." Hamas, for its part, has welcomed Fatah's consent to forming a unity government. Hamas spokesman in Gaza Sami Abu Zuhri said the Islamic resistance movement never stopped urging and calling on Fatah and other Palestinian factions to join a government of national unity. "We in Hamas have repeatedly demonstrated that our main preoccupation is the national cause. We never did and we will never put Hamas's immediate interests before Palestinian national interests. Yes, we try to match Hamas's interests and our national interests. But when there is a lack of concordance, there is no question as to which comes first." Palestinian government officials said consultations to form a national unity government would include all political and resistance factions. Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said he hoped that such a government would enable the Palestinians to speak in one voice and break the American-led and Israeli- enforced political and financial blockade against the Palestinian people. Israel and its guardian ally, the United States, rejected the outcome of Palestinian parliamentary elections in January after Hamas scored a resounding victory over the erstwhile ruling party, Fatah, led by Mahmoud Abbas, who is largely viewed as a favourite of the West. Apparently with explicit American backing, Israel has ever since imposed draconian punitive measures against the nominally autonomous enclaves of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, causing unprecedented suffering and hardship to the estimated 3.8 million Palestinians and pushing the most vulnerable segments of society to the brink of starvation. In addition to withholding hundreds of millions of dollars of Palestinian tax revenue returns, Israel has effectively barred Palestinians from accessing work and food by erecting hundreds of roadblocks manned by trigger-happy Israeli troops. For its part, the Bush administration has come to view Israel's slow-motion genocide against the Palestinians as part of its so-called "war on terror", continued to impose crippling sanctions on Palestinian and other banks operating in the West Bank and Gaza, preventing them from dealing with the Hamas-led government or transferring money donated by Muslim and Arab states into the occupied territories. Harsh sanctions, which are being imposed with unprecedented vindictiveness and hostility, have led the Palestinian government to being unable to pay the salaries of over 160,000 public employees and civil servants, including 70,000 security cadres. A UN report published this week pointed out that the bulk of Gazans were already nearing the brink of starvation. In the West Bank, poverty rates are catching up, with more Palestinian families unable to meet the basic needs of life due to their loss of income. As for the future, it is too soon to judge whether the formation of a new Palestinian government will prompt Israel and the United States to end their present siege on the Palestinians. Israel's preoccupation with the Palestinian issue, aside from the daily forays of murder and terror, is at an all- time low as Israeli political society is struggling to face the after effects of its ill-fated war with Hizbullah, including the prospect of the downfall of the Olmert government which may spark fresh general elections. Some observers have suggested that Israel may seek (as though it is not doing so enough already) to beat down the Palestinians further as a kind of compensation for the wholesome defeat the Israeli army suffered at the hands of resistance fighters in South Lebanon. Indeed, the current Israeli government, dominated by erstwhile Likud hawks eager to outmanoeuvre their jingoistic far right wing opponents like former prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu, seems determined to bring down the Hamas-led government in order to lower Palestinian expectations with regard to any future conflict settlement with Israel. Netanyahu, whose popularity has skyrocketed since the war with Hizbullah, favours "strategic escalation" in the region until Israel and the West achieve a "total victory" over emerging Islamic forces. In numerous interviews with Western news agencies and TV networks, Netanyahu has claimed that there can be no peace or stability in the Middle East unless the West defeats anti-Israeli forces. Utterly ignoring Israel's decades-old occupation of Palestine and systematic persecution and dispossession of its people -- which is the central cause of war and instability in the region -- Netanyahu ranted ad nauseam that Israel was standing at the forefront of the confrontation between the West and the Muslim world. In other words, Netanyahu is keener on fighting a "war of civilisations" between Islam and the West than doing anything in good faith to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. What is truly dangerous is the possibility that his ravings will be accepted by some influential circles in Israel, and especially in the US where the pro-Israeli neo-cons have had a conspicuous stranglehold on the Bush administration. Bush himself, two weeks ago, spoke of "a confrontation with Islamic fascists", ignoring decades of Israeli terror and aggression against the peoples of the Arab world. That all of this can be discussed in the general media while Israel's occupation army continues to wreak havoc and terror on Palestinian population centres in the West Bank and Gaza Strip beggars belief. On Saturday, 26 August, Israeli soldiers shot and killed 15-year-old Muntaser Suleiman Akka in downtown Nablus. Twenty-two other minors and children were injured, many by live ammunition, during what the Israeli army termed "confrontations" between stone-throwing youngsters and heavily-armed and heavily-armoured Israeli occupation soldiers. Earlier, the Israeli army destroyed a six-storey building in Nablus on the grounds that two Fatah resistance fighters were hiding inside the building. Fifteen more Palestinians were killed in four days (from Saturday to Tuesday) including an unarmed civilian guard in Ramallah. According to an additional UN report issued 24 August, the Israeli occupation army killed 202 Palestinians since the June capture by Hamas fighters of an Israeli soldier. The figure doesn't include the nearly 20 Palestinians killed after 24 August, which brings the tally of the Israeli army to an average of four Palestinians per day. The human cost is not the only price the Palestinians pay for illogical Western support of Israeli state terrorism. The Israeli army has destroyed the bulk of civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, including power stations, schools, colleges, bridges, streets, as well as thousands of residential homes. Israel's "scorched earth" rampage, which Palestinian officials have likened -- and with evidential justification -- to the German blitz during World War II, was ostensibly "retaliation" for the capturing of a single Israeli soldier by Palestinian resistance fighters. Rejecting any prisoner swap deal (Israel is holding as many as 10,000 Palestinian prisoners, including hundreds of women and children and political internees without charge or trial), Israel rained down indiscriminate destruction upon Gaza, largely while the world was watching its army do the same in Lebanon.
