The cause is at stake

February 7, 2007

The cause is at stake


TUESDAY's meeting in the Holy City of Makkah between Palestinian President and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader-in-exile Khaled Meshaal was portrayed by many was an effort to end the Hamas-Fatah struggle for power and the immediate focus is formation of a Palestinian national unity government to replace the Hamas-led administration. Indeed, these issues were in focus, but to limit the scope of the talks to them would be a narrow vision.
It was not as much as a deal to stop fighting with each other that was important as an agreement that addresses the deep roots of conflict between the two Palestinian streams represented by Hamas and Fatah.
At stake is the future of the Palestinian struggle for independence.
In a wider perspective, Fatah, which has adopted a secular platform, is ready to negotiate peace with Israel. The group is willing to accept compromises based on ground realities as long as the Palestinian right to set up an independent state in the territories that Israel occupied in the 1967 war with Arab East Jerusalem as its capital is recognised, respected and upheld as the basis for peace. Fatah is aware that the precise borders of the proposed state would have to take into consideration the Israeli insistence that it would not dismantle some of the largest Jewish settlements that dot the West Bank. Some form a trade-off would have to be agreed upon in order to solve the thorny issue of the future of the settlements. The status of Arab East Jerusalem and the right of the Palestinian refugees also pose serious problems in view of Israel's firm refusal to accept the Palestinian demands that Arab East Jerusalem should be their capital and the Palestinian refugees should be allowed to exercise their right to return to their ancestral land or to receive compensation for the properties they lost when Israel was created there in 1948.
On the other hand, Hamas, which bases itself of a strictly Islamist platform, want to set up an Islamic state in all of Palestine as it existed before the state of Israel was created. It argues that all those Jews who migrated to Israel should return to where they came from and the entire pre-1948 territory be handed over to the Palestinians to set up the proposed Islamic state. It is not willing to recognise Israel, renounce armed resistance and accept past agreements signed by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Israel.
Hamas leaders are not naive to believe that these demands could be met. They have laid down these conditions as their opening gambit. Clear signals have come from various Hamas quarters that the group would be willing to accept a state within the 1967 lines, but it wants that state to be an Islamist caliphate, which Israel fears would continue to wage the quest for entire pre-1948 Palestine.
As such, the compromise that Fatah and Hamas needed to make in Makkah was clearly spelt out. They might or might not produce a breakthrough in Makkah, but they have to take the bull by the horns and come up with a common platform for the liberation of Palestine through negotiations with Israel. They need to remove their fundamental differences in approach. Forming a national unity government would indeed prove to be the soundest move but only as long as it is supported by a clear understanding of how to take forward the struggle for independence. It should not be a stop-gap tactic that would only put off to a future date a bitter fight to the finish.
The entire Arab World is appealing to the Fatah and Hamas leaders: The fate of the Palestinian people is in your hands, and do not play games with it. If you prove yourselves to be incapable of settling your differences for the sake of your people, then it also means that you are incapable of leading the Palestinian struggle. You have to clean up your act and put it together. You would be failing your own cause and your own people if you don't rise to the challenge.