As expected, the inter-Palestinian dialogue ended before it even started and great efforts made by Egyptian mediators throughout months came to nothing. Egypt tried to solve the Palestinian difficult riddle and to put its hands on the endless points of agreement and disagreement between the two parties so that the Palestinians would be united. However, the dialogue ended through a statement from Damascus announcing the withdrawal of three Palestinian factions and the postponement of the dialogue sine die! Anyone feeling national responsibility does not need to be very intelligent to know that Israel is the only beneficiary from the failure of the dialogue, while the Palestinians are the biggest losers. The silliest joke in contemporary Arab history is the division of "occupied Palestine" into two states, each one of which has its own national anthem, capital, president, government and TV channel. They carry out their activities under the yoke of the happy Israeli occupation, which spreads its fighters and armored vehicles in Palestine and imposes land, sea and air siege on it. These two states live on international aid and smuggling of food commodities through tunnels. In addition, they use Israeli shekel and their top officials cannot move from a state to another and in some case from a village to another without an Israeli permission! However, they launch war against each other and need mediators to sign a peace treaty among themselves! Any expert in political games would find it easy to understand that the two main conflicting parties – Abbas's and Hamas's states – accepted the dialogue under the yoke of local, regional and international conditions and in light of Arab popular and official pressures (the Arab countries even threatened to cut relations with the party that would reject the dialogue or cause its failure). Seriously enough, each party imagined that it has the upper hand and that it could achieve its goals without giving up its powers. Each of them also thought that if it did not achieve its goals, it would cause the dialogue to fail, hold the other party responsible for that and, accordingly, be spared the threats announced by the Arab League! Hamas bet on the fact that the failure of the Annapolis Conference and President Bush's failure to fulfill his promise to establish a Palestinian state before the end of his term in office would weaken Palestinian President Abbas's position. In addition, Hamas thought that the end of Abbas's term in office on January 10, 2009 would force him to call for presidential elections, otherwise he would lost his constitutional legitimacy and competence as a negotiator on behalf of the Palestinian people, as he cannot hold elections in light of the status quo in Gaza. Therefore, he has no option but to recognize the current situation in Gaza. For its part, Abbas's state bet on the erosion of Hamas's popularity under Ismail Haniyeh's government, which turned the Islamic emirate of Gaza into a big Israeli prison the inhabitants of which cannot find jobs, food, water, electricity and medicine. They have a TV that always broadcasts songs. In addition, they started to establish a media production city to produce programs calling on citizens to stand against the occupation although they themselves abandoned resistance. Abbas's expected that this would make Hamas agree to return to the situation before the June 2007 coup d'etats with some amendments! One of the reasons why Hamas withdrew from the dialogue was that other Palestinian factions started holding discussions to prepare the dialogue's agenda. Hamas aimed to make a deal with Abbas's government under which Abbas would negotiate with Israel and sign a peace treaty with it, while Hamas would be given the power to establish an Islamic Caliphate in Palestine which recognizes Israel and normalizes relations with it! Fatah refused to negotiate with Hamas except through a dialogue with all the Palestinians. Therefore, regional parties seized the opportunity and encouraged Hamas to spoil the dialogue and keep the situation as it is. This way, Gaza would be a tool of pressure they could use in their negotiations with the next US president to solve their complicated problems with the US. The Palestinian national authorities topped by Fatah and Hamas failed to reach a national common denominator to come up with a clear-cut aim and to harmonize "negotiation" and "resistance" so that no one of them would be an alternative for the other. This should be the issue in the competition among all parties in early presidential and legislative elections in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem under international supervision, so that the Palestinian people can choose their representatives and determine their political goals. Then, all of us will support those representatives, but before this, no one has the right to allege that he or she represents the Palestinian people.
