The auspicious news from Cairo that Fatah and Hamas are close to agreeing to a national unity pact that would end more than two years of sullen hostility between the two largest political groups in occupied Palestine is a great-post present for the Palestinian people.
Needless to say we Palestinians have suffered immensely as a result of the rift between the two groups. Moreover Israel the occupier of our country and tormentor of our people has been taking full advantage of our disunity stupidity and internal troubles.
I know this is not the time for recriminations and finger-pointing. However for the sake of truth it is imperative that we try to set the record straight.
It is unlikely that the Fatah organization has agreed to reconcile with Hamas out of genuine concerns for Palestinian national unity. It is more likely that Fatah has reached the conclusion that Hamas is here to stay and that it is futile to keep up betting on Hamas’ demise because that is not going to happen.
Hence it is perfectly safe to argue that the main factor contributing to making Fatah abandon its erstwhile hostile designs against Hamas is the latter’s legendary resilience and steadfastness in the face of the tremendous pressure exerted by Israel the west certain Arab regimes as well as Fatah.
Fatah or more correctly the treacherous camp within that movement thought and hoped that the nearly hermetic economic and financial blockade on the Gaza Strip would bring Hamas to its knees.
Furthermore when Israel launched its criminal onslaught against the Gaza Strip Fatah thought it seized its long-awaited opportunity to see Hamas defeated and humiliated.
The December-January blitz killed and maimed thousands of innocent people and wreaked havoc on the civilian infrastructure in the coastal territory.
We know for sure that some (not all) Fatah elements were in a state of euphoria when Israeli warplanes were raining death on Gaza. In fact some Fatah operatives in certain parts of the West Bank celebrated the wanton bombing and bloodletting in Gaza by distributing sweets.
Notwithstanding Hamas didn’t collapse under the brunt of the pressure and Israel for its own peculiar political and military considerations didn’t pursue the war “to the end” as the PA reportedly had asked Israel to do.
This fact turned Fatah’s calculations upside down causing the group to resign to the fact that rapprochement with Hamas was inescapable.
Moreover Fatah had hoped that by systematically persecuting Hamas’ supporters in the West Bank and subjecting them to all forms of cruel treatments including torture to death Israel would grant Fatah a certificate of good conduct and grant the Abbas-Fayyad leadership political concessions.
But that didn’t happen as Israelis elected an extremist right-wing government that views the PA as a sort of Palestinian judenrat whose main job is to serve Palestinian interests and torment its own people on Israel’s behalf.
This is the message that many Fatah leaders were forced to internalize especially recently as the Netanyahu government began treating the PA and Fatah leadership with utter disregard and utmost contempt.
Then eventually came the straw that broke the camel’s back when President Obama tacitly admitted his failure to pressure Israel to freeze the malignant expansion of Jewish settler activities all over the West Bank especially in occupied East Jerusalem.
Fatah had hoped that Obama would honor his word and force Israel to stop settlement aggrandizement which has already killed any realistic prospects for the creation of a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank.
This is why Fatah’s disappointment and sense of betrayal were staggering when Obama told PA leader Mahmoud Abbas that the PA would have to resume stalled “peace” talks with Israel without preconditions.
Needless to say the phrase “without preconditions” means one thing namely that Israel may continue to build and expand settlements in the West Bank and that the Palestinian leadership would have to return to the negotiations table irrespective of the settlement issue.
What Obama effectively told Abbas in that infamous tripartite meeting in New York last week is that Israel may effectively continue to devour the “disputed piece of cheese” until very little or nothing is left to talk about.
Now Fatah is finding itself facing a real dilemma. On the one hand the group can’t just agree to return to open-ended peace talks with an extremist Israeli government at whose helm stands an arrogant pathological liar named Benyamin Netanyahu. Such a step would be a public relations disaster and cost Fatah dearly in terms of popularity and public support.
Fatah after all had been vowing not to resume the effectively moribund peace process unless and until Israel froze all settlement expansion in the West Bank.
On the other hand succumbing to American pressure and caving in to Israeli arrogance would make Fatah lose face and lose credibility and popularity.
To be sure Fatah would agree to return to peace talks with the Zionist regime even in the absence of a settlement freeze if there was the slightest chance for an honorable and dignified peace deal.
But with Netanyahu and his cohorts the chances of real peace e.g. getting Israel to return to the 1967 borders and allowing the repatriation of the refugees is even less than zero.
On the other hand Fatah just can’t say “No” to the American administration. Fatah is not independent enough and patriotic enough to do so since this could boomerang badly on a movement that is kept afloat only thanks to western handouts.
This is why Fatah is apparently trying to overcome this predicament first by seeking a face-saving formula that would allow the PA (PLO) to resume talks with minimal losses e.g. by obtaining assurances from the Obama administration that the end game of talks with Israel would take the shape of an Israeli withdrawal to the borders of the 4th of June 1967.
But this is unlikely to happen since Netanyahu would rather see the dismantlement of his government than agree to withdraw from the West Bank and dismantle the settlements.
And second by rebuilding the bridges with Hamas Fatah hopes to find itself in a less disadvantageous position vis-à-vis Israel.
In any case it is essential that Hamas remains strong and resilient as it has been. This is a sine qua non not only for Palestinian national unity but also for thwarting Israeli efforts and designs to force the Palestinian people to abandon its national constants and aspirations for justice and freedom from the Nazi-like Israeli occupation.
