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PLO and Hamas agree landmark unity pact PLO and Hamas agree landmark unity pact
(about 2 hours later)
Mahmoud Abbas's Palestine Liberation Organisation and Hamas on Wednesday agreed to implement a unity pact, with the aim of forming a government within five weeks. The two main rival Palestinian factions have signed a new accord designed to end seven years of sometimes violent division, paving the way for elections later in the year and the formation of a new unity government within weeks.
The move, announced at a joint news conference by both sides, includes the intention to hold national elections six months after a vote of confidence by the Palestinian parliament. The move, after a day of talks between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza that lasted until three in the morning, comes less than a week before the expiry of the deadline for US-sponsored peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority on 29 April and is certain to complicate US efforts to seek another nine-month extension to those talks.
Palestinians have long hoped for a healing of the political rift between the PLO and the Gaza-based Islamist group Hamas, which won the Palestinian elections in 2006 and in 2007 took control of the Gaza Strip from forces loyal to the western-backed the president, Abbas. Israel immediately responded by saying the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was moving to peace with Hamas instead of peace with Israel.
Arab-brokered unity pacts reached between the two sides had not been implemented to date, and many Palestinians were left feeling sceptical about their leaders' reconciliation pledges. "He has to choose," said prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. "Does he want peace with Hamas or peace with Israel? You can have one but not the other. I hope he chooses peace, so far he hasn't done so."
"This is the good news we tell our people: the era of division is over," Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas's prime minister, told Palestinian reporters. In the aftermath of the announcement of the agreement Israel cancelled a planned session of peace negotiations with the Palestinians. An Israeli air strike on a site in the north of the Gaza strip, which wounded 12 people including children, underscored the deep mutual suspicion and hostility that persist.
Hamas has repeatedly battled Israel, which it refuses to recognise. Before the announcement on Wednesday, Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, cautioned Abbas over the unity efforts, saying he had to choose between peace with Israel or its Islamist enemy. The agreement, signed in Gaza City on Wednesday by Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister of Hamas, and a senior PLO delegation dispatched by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas marks the latest attempt in three years of efforts to end the discord between the two factions.
Abbas's Fatah party has remained in control of the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank and pursued troubled peace talks with Israel, which are set to expire on 29 April. A packed news conference in a conference hall adjoining Haniyeh's home in a Gaza's Beach Camp cheered as the Haniyeh announced the agreement to end the fracture between the two groups and Gaza and the West Bank. "This is the good news we have to tell the people: the era of discord is ended," Haniyeh said.
Although there have been failed attempts to end the rift between Hamas and Fatah before, this agreement comes with both factions facing internal problems.
Hamas has become ever more isolated internationally, particularly since the like-minded Muslim Brotherhood was ousted in Egypt last year. The new military-led authorities in Cairo have cracked down on the smuggling tunnels into Gaza. Fatah and Abbas have been damaged by the failure of peace negotiations to deliver results amid continuing Israeli settlement building, all of which has pushed the issue of reconciliation up the agenda.
Despite talk before the announcement about the quick formation of a national unity government and a decree for elections, the wording of the agreement was less cut and dried – suggesting a possible timing for elections in at "least six months" after talks to try to form a new government by agreement.
The statement was also not clear whether Hamas figures would be represented in any new government – which could lead to a cut in EU and US funding. Sceptics, however, noted that similar agreements between the two sides – under Arab sponsorship – have been reached in the past in the past but never implemented.
The root of recent conflict between the two largest Palestinian movements follows the 2006 elections which Hamas won but the west, Israel and Abbas largely refused to recognise. Hamas asserted its control of Gaza in 2007 leaving Abbas in charge of only parts of the West Bank. Since then both sides have become entrenched in their territories, setting up respective governments and their own security forces, and arresting their rivals.
Key stumbling blocks in past attempts at reconciliation have been focused on security forces and on the Palestinian Authority's security co-operation arrangements on the West Bank that has seen the PA arrest and jail members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
There was no mention in the announcement that security co-operation with Israel would change. Despite Netanyahu's comments, later in the day a senior Israeli official was more cautious about the implications of the Gaza agreement.
"The agreement is vague on details and the prime minister's office is consulting tonight the meaning of it. It does not bode well but for the moment the policy is wait and see."