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Palestinian Rivals Announce Unity Pact, Drawing U.S. and Israeli Rebuke
The faltering Middle East peace process was thrown into further jeopardy on Wednesday, with Israel and the United States harshly condemning a new deal announced by feuding Palestinian factions, including the militant group Hamas, to repair their seven-year rift.
Israel canceled a negotiating session scheduled for Wednesday night shortly after leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization joined hands with their rivals from Hamas at a celebratory ceremony in the Gaza Strip.
“Whoever chooses Hamas does not want peace,” the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in a statement, describing the group as “a murderous terrorist organization that calls for the destruction of Israel.”
The unity pact, coming days before the April 29 expiration date for the American-brokered peace talks that have been the mainstay of Secretary of State John Kerry’s tenure, surprised officials in Washington, which, like Israel, deems Hamas a terrorist group and forbids direct dealings with it. After months of intensive shuttle diplomacy in which Mr. Kerry relentlessly pursued the peace process and even dangled the possibility of releasing an American convicted of spying for Israel to salvage the lifeless talks, his spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, called the Palestinian move “disappointing” and the timing “troubling.”
“Any Palestinian government must unambiguously and explicitly commit to nonviolence, recognition of the state of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations between the parties,” Ms. Psaki said, citing conditions Hamas has repeatedly rejected. “It’s hard to see how Israel can be expected to negotiate with a government that does not believe in its right to exist.”
Hamas and Fatah, the faction that dominates the P.L.O., have signed several similar accords before that were not carried out, so it remained unclear whether Wednesday’s deal promised a real resolution or a replay of an old movie.
Some analysts saw the step primarily as a tactic by President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority to pressure Israel to make concessions as the clock winds down on extending the fraught negotiations. He said in statement that “there is no contradiction at all” between reconciliation and negotiation, adding, “We are totally committed to establishing a just and comprehensive peace based on the two-state principle.”
Other experts noted that Palestinian political conditions have drastically changed since the signing of previous agreements, which could lead both parties to make the compromises necessary to put this one into action. Hamas has been in a deep political and economic crisis since the military-backed government took over Egypt last summer and largely cut ties with Gaza. Mr. Abbas, at 79, is looking for a legacy and an exit strategy.
Reconciliation is deeply resonant among Palestinians and could revive the president’s sagging popularity.
“It’s not bad for both sides — it is bad for the peace process,” said Shimrit Meir, an Israeli analyst of Palestinian politics and editor of The Source, an Arabic news website. “It is simply rude, in diplomatic language, when Kerry is doing his last heroic effort to save the peace process, to reward it with reconciliation with a terrorist group. I think this is a message, and it’s very blunt.”
Beyond the damage to the peace talks, joining forces with Hamas could cost the Palestinians millions of dollars in financial aid from the United States and Europe, and prompt a host of retaliatory actions by Israel.
Even as the deal was being announced, there were other signs of tension. An Israeli airstrike hit northern Gaza, apparently missing the militant on a motorcycle it was aiming for and wounding 12 Palestinians, including two children, according to Gaza health officials. Later Wednesday evening, two rockets fired from Gaza landed in open areas of southern Israel.
The schism between Hamas and Fatah began in 2007, with a brief but bloody civil war that followed a failed unity government after Hamas’s victory in 2006 Palestinian elections. It left Palestinian territory divided, with Hamas ruling Gaza, the impoverished and isolated coastal expanse, and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority governing the larger and more populous West Bank.
Dreams of reconciliation have been repeatedly dashed, after much-trumpeted agreements signed in Cairo in 2011 and Doha in 2012 were never carried out.
“Sorry to say that we are familiar with such celebrations,” said Talal Okal, a Gaza political analyst. “I hope that this time will be more serious, but to be more serious is to go directly and quickly to the first step, to let the people touch and see, not to hear only.”
On Wednesday afternoon, after two days of meetings at the home of the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniya, in Gaza City’s Beach refugee camp, the Palestinian leaders vowed to form a government of technocrats within five weeks that would prepare for long-overdue elections six months later.
“I announce to our people the news that the years of split are over,” Mr. Haniya said triumphantly.
Azzam al-Ahmad, a senior Fatah official who headed the P.L.O. delegation to Gaza, said he hoped the deal would be “a true beginning and a true partnership.”
Ziad Abu Amr, deputy prime minister of the Palestinian Authority and a close aide to Mr. Abbas, said the new deal came about because “the situation has become more demanding and the pressures are rising.” He cited Egypt’s frequent closing of the Rafah border crossing, Gaza’s gateway to the world, which he said a technocratic government could reverse, as well as domestic political concerns.
“It’s a psychological and national issue that Palestinians feel they are united,” Mr. Abu Amr said. “This split is hurting them.”
He and other Palestinian leaders dismissed Israel’s threats and said reconciliation was an internal matter, noting that the presence of extreme right-wing members in Israel’s governing coalition had not stopped Palestinians from participating in the peace talks. They also pointed out that some Israeli leaders had questioned Mr. Abbas’s ability to deliver a peace deal with Hamas controlling Gaza.
“Mr. Netanyahu and his government were using Palestinian division as an excuse not to make peace,” said Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator. “Now they want to use Palestinian reconciliation as an excuse for the same purpose. This is utterly absurd.”
Israel’s cabinet planned to meet Thursday to plan its next steps. Dore Gold, a senior adviser to Mr. Netanyahu, called the Palestinian deal “a real game changer,” and said, “You cannot have a serious peace process with Hamas inside.”
Tzipi Livni, Israel’s chief negotiator, said the reconciliation was a “very problematic development.”
Some Washington-based Middle East experts, who had long thought Mr. Kerry’s efforts to be an uphill struggle given the yawning gaps between Israeli and Palestinian positions on fundamental issues, said Wednesday’s developments boded ill.
Aaron David Miller, a former State Department peace negotiator, said Mr. Abbas had “bought peace at home in exchange for significant tensions with the Israelis” and called the move “one more nail to a peace-process coffin that is rapidly being closed.”
Dennis B. Ross, another former American peace envoy, said that the move could make Mr. Abbas “less susceptible to a domestic backlash for continuing the process with the Israelis,” but that “the timing is very problematic — when the process is already faltering, this could be a body blow.”
Tamara Cofman Wittes, director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said the implications depended on the precise terms of the reconciliation, which have yet to be revealed.
“If, and it is a big ‘if,’ Hamas comes under the P.L.O. umbrella in such a way that it accedes to the P.L.O.’s recognition of Israel and the P.L.O.’s signed agreements with Israel,” she said, “that would be historic.”
“What would make it horrible is if Hamas were to join the P.L.O. without those kinds of commitments,” Ms. Wittes added. “Then it calls into question the P.L.O.’s commitments that it has already made.”
Jodi Rudoren
The New York Times