Having endured so much for so long, and having hoped, it now appears that the reconciliation deal the Palestinian people banked on is worth no more than the ink on its paper, writes Saleh Al-Naami Three months after refocussing his attention on his private business, Mohamed Al-Dew, 54, is back on the main streets of Gaza City calling on people to join a campaign to put pressure on Fatah and Hamas to apply the reconciliation agreement reached in Cairo. Al-Dew is an engineer who was very active over the past two years to end internal divisions; he dedicated all his time to organising individual and group activities aiming to rally the people and Palestinian public opinion to intervene and demand an end to internal division. "I argued with members of my family and friends when the Cairo agreement was signed," he told Al-Ahram Weekly. "I believed that things will be better, but I have found that reality is below expectations. I believe there was never a genuine will to reach reconciliation, but it was merely a political manoeuvre to achieve certain goals." Al-Dew believes that failure to implement reconciliation is caused by the dispute over who should form the next transitional government, which proves that there is no genuine intention to reach agreement and demonstrates the level of foreign interference. Al-Dew is not the only Palestinian who is despairing over the failure of Fatah and Hamas to implement the Cairo agreement. The majority of Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are disappointed after thinking that the reconciliation deal would change their daily lives. The cruel reality has shocked them. Kamel Awwad, 57, does not hide his displeasure and continuously complains to anyone he meets that he pays a quarter of his salary in rent for the house he has lived in for two and a half years. It was once a complete house, one of hundreds of homes destroyed by Israeli jets during the last war on the Gaza Strip at the beginning of 2009. Awwad had hoped that the reconciliation agreement would result in reconstruction operations that would rebuild all the destroyed homes. But as the deal faltered he has become very disappointed because he realises that now he will have to wait a considerable amount of time before conditions allow the reconstruction of his home. Awwad had allocated a separate apartment in the house for Gamal, his eldest son, to marry in. Until the house is rebuild his son cannot marry. "Those being hit with a stick are not like those who are merely counting the hits," he told the Weekly. "If faction leaders experienced what we go through, reconciliation would have been achieved a long time ago -- at least to alleviate the suffering of the people." Khaled is a Gazan who suffers from the ongoing disputes because he is unable to acquire a passport and hence return to his studies at a university in Morocco. The government in Ramallah is delaying issuing more than 30,000 passports to Gazans. The reconciliation agreement clearly stated that this problem would be resolved, and representatives of those without passports were promised by many Palestinian officials that the passports would be rushed through. Such promises have vanished under current conditions. Most Gazans believe that increasingly difficult procedures at the Rafah Crossing are directly linked to faltering efforts to implement the reconciliation deal. Mohamed Alyan failed to leave the Gaza Strip to take his father, Hassan, for medical treatment for a heart condition at a hospital in Egypt. He is scheduled to travel in August, but his father's condition is deteriorating and he is trying to take him for treatment as soon as possible. If the reconciliation agreement were implemented, the Rafah Crossing would operate normally. Even more upsetting for Palestinians is the return of the war of words between Hamas and Fatah, as both sides accuse the other of bringing the reconciliation deal to a dead end. Salah Al-Bardawil, a leading figure in Hamas, believes that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is directly responsible for failure to implement the deal by insisting on appointing incumbent Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad as head of the interim cabinet. "The reconciliation agreement states that both sides must agree on who will form the cabinet and its members," Al-Bardawil explained to the Weekly. "By insisting on Fayyad, Abbas is not interested in making the agreement work." He cited another "contribution" by Abbas to the failure of reconciliation by suggesting that the Palestinian Legislative Council should not resume its legislative work and oversight, and that the next government should not be presented to parliament for approval. "If we agree to this," continued Al-Bardawil, "we are legitimising the suspension of parliament." That is unacceptable, he said. Jibril Rajoob, member of Fatah's Central Committee, refutes these accusations and believes that Abbas is insisting on Fayyad out of "concern for the supreme interests of the Palestinian people. We don't want to provoke the world community and don't want to expand the siege on Gaza to the West Bank. The next government will be an interim one, and therefore we do not want to take any steps that are politically insensitive on the part of the Palestinian leadership -- especially as we prepare for recognition in September." The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a prominent faction on the left that was especially critical of Hamas before signing the agreement, clearly declared that the one responsible for failing to implement the conciliation deal is Abbas because he is insisting on Fayyad. At the same time, several Palestinian economic experts in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have criticised Fayyad for feigning a financial crisis in the Palestinian Authority (PA) to convince Palestinian public opinion that he is capable of managing the economy. Fayyad said that his cabinet would only be able to pay half the salaries of civil servants in June because of economic constraints. Omar Shaaban, an economic expert, is irritated that Fayyad is suddenly talking about an economic crisis especially that until recently he was declaring that he had drawn up a comprehensive plan to create key institutions of a Palestinian state. Nasr Abdel-Karim, professor of economics at Al-Najah University in Nablus, emphasised that the resources of the PA were not in fact depleted, which means that there have been no developments to justify Fayyad's claims of a financial crisis. Meanwhile, steps on the ground demonstrate that signing a conciliation agreement did not greatly alter the conduct of the PA's security agencies vis-�-vis Hamas leaders and members. While Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu criticises Abbas for intending to go to the UN to seek recognition for a Palestinian state, Israeli military leaders are showering senior officials in the PA's security agencies with praise because of the "serious" steps they are taking against Hamas leaders in the West Bank. The popular Yediot Aharonot newspaper revealed that a number of Israeli cabinet members were surprised when they visited senior Israeli military officers in the West Bank, who informed them that Fayyad's security agencies have stepped up arrests of Hamas leaders and focused on targeting senior leaders of the group. If this wasn't enough, Fatah's internal crisis after the dismissal of leading member Mohamed Dahlan makes it difficult to implement reconciliation. Deep differences and disputes have surfaced in Fatah ranks in the West Bank. Many Fatah circles in Gaza are refusing to recognise Abbas's legitimacy and the current leadership of the group, making it difficult to implement the deal on the ground. Reconciliation requires the cooperation of everyone on the Palestinian scene, and Dahlan's followers represent a critical group for Fatah in the Gaza Strip. Overall, there is a sense of deep despair sweeping over Palestinians because of failure to implement the hard won reconciliation deal, despite internal and regional efforts to save the Cairo agreement.
