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Fatah and Hamas Unite, But for Naught
// US Will Not Lift Financial Blockade of Palestine
Under the watchful eye of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, talks took place in Jerusalem yesterday between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, at which the leader of the Palestinian Authority failed to convince his negotiating partners to lift the financial blockade of Palestine. It was made clear to Mr. Abbas that as long as the radical Hamas movement remains a partner in the government without agreeing to fulfill the demands of the international community, Palestine will receive no aid money. Kommersant's correspondent in Jerusalem Grigory Asmolov has the details.
The talks in Jerusalem's fashionable David's Citadel Hotel began at 10 o'clock in the morning and lasted for two hours. Afterwards, the US secretary of state was able to compress the meeting's entire contents into a 90-second sound bite for the press that precluded the possibility of questions. Obviously, there was no sensational scoop. "[We] discussed issues arising from the agreement for the formation of a Palestinian national unity government, and the position of the Quartet that any Palestinian Authority government must be committed to non-violence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations, including regarding the Roadmap," said Ms. Rice. "All three of us affirmed our commitment to a two-state solution," she asserted, adding that "a Palestinian state cannot be born of violence and terror."
Originally, Washington intended yesterday's three-way talks to be the opening of a new chapter in the peace process. When the State Department conceived the idea of the talks, the confrontation between the two leading political factions in the Palestinian Authority – the Islamist group Hamas and the secular Fatah movement – was threatening to grow into a civil war. With its support for President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party, Washington hoped to facilitate a revival of the dialog between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
However, that undertaking found itself in jeopardy after February 9, when President Abbas met in Mecca with the leadership of Hamas to sign an agreement creating a national unity government. Against Washington's wishes, Mr. Abbas struck a compromise with the Islamists and agreed to create a new cabinet without fulfilling any of the demands made by the so-called Quartet, which includes Russia, the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations. Now that Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a political union, Israel and the US are left wondering with whom they are carrying on a dialog and what exactly they can count on in the framework of that dialog. All that remained of the former plans was the date of the meeting between the US secretary of state and the two Middle Eastern leaders, which was supposed to be a historical moment but which turned out instead to be doomed to failure in advance.
Not long before the meeting was scheduled to take place, the Israeli prime minister's inner circle advised him not to attend. However, Mr. Olmert decided otherwise: according to a source in the prime minister's administration, if the meeting had been postponed, Ehud Olmert would have been criticized for passing up the opportunity. Condoleezza Rice also apparently foresaw the fruitlessness of the undertaking. "It is, of course, an interesting, even complicated time. And…a number of people [have] said it's a complicated time and I said that if I waited for an uncomplicated time to come to the Middle East, perhaps I would never get on the airplane," she joked at a meeting with President Abbas on February 18 at which she recast the goal of the Jerusalem talks as an attempt "to begin to explore and probe the political and diplomatic horizon" of the peace process. In Israel, a common joke is that the main characteristic of the horizon is that even after you define it, it always keeps moving further away as you try to approach it.
Thus, the outcome of yesterday's talks came as no surprise. Although the US expressed sharp disapproval of the union between Fatah and Hamas, Washington cannot afford to cut ties with Mahmoud Abbas, as such a step would be equivalent to washing its hands of all attempts to make any kind of headway in the Middle East. However, the US is also not prepared to reinstate its multimillion dollar aid package for Palestine. In essence, Condoleezza Rice has granted the nascent Fatah-Hamas cabinet a trial period, but really the Palestinians have no other options: either they toe the line drawn by the Quartet or they can forget about help from the West. And not only of the financial variety. As Ms. Rice let slip in an interview with a Arab newspaper, the creation of a Palestinian state is not likely to happen any time soon – and certainly not before the end of George Bush's term in office in 2008.
Grigory Asmolov
All the Article in Russian as of Feb. 20, 2007
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