Achieving Palestinian Unity Today More Important Than Ever, Palestinian Factions Say
But current political circumstances are not suitable to reach a Palestinian national reconciliation, according to Gaza-based analyst
[Gaza] As tensions dramatically mount in the West Bank, especially following last week’s deadly Israeli military arrest raid in the Jenin refugee camp, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced his decision to suspend security coordination with Israel and invited all Palestinian political forces to “an emergency meeting, to agree on a comprehensive, united national vision to confront the Israeli aggression,” according to the statement issued by presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh.
The announcement came hours after the Israeli military raid left at least nine Palestinians, including a 61-year-old woman, dead.
Palestinian factions, including Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, hailed the PA move and called for change in the domestic situation as soon as possible.
“There is no time more necessary than these times to truly start reforming the Palestinian house, building a new Palestinian political system, and implementing the reconciliation agreements that we signed previously, the last of which was in Algeria,” Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem told The Media Line.
According to Qassem, the difficult reality imposed by Israel’s extreme right-wing government and its racist policies “requires taking practical steps on the ground to achieve reconciliation and achieve national unity, starting with the formation of a national front to manage the resistance in the West Bank and Jerusalem, in addition to reorganizing the PLO through the formation of a new national council that includes all the various bodies, followed by the formation of the unity government and other authority institutions in order to counter the Israeli threats.”
The current Israeli government is an extreme right-wing government that will not allow Palestinians to rest and pay attention to their own internal situation
Walid al-Awad, a member of the Political Bureau of the Palestinian People’s Party, has the same opinion.
“We are facing a fascist Israeli government whose goal is to carry out the broadest mass expulsion of Palestinians, and annex the largest possible area of Palestinian land,” he told The Media Line. “Moreover, there is intense international pressure on the Palestinian leadership to submit to this fait accompli. Therefore, ending the division and restoring Palestinian national unity has become inevitable.”
All disagreements must be set aside for the time being, al-Awad suggested, adding that “mechanisms to start a serious Palestinian national dialogue must be developed. Palestinian factions, for their part, must respond to this [PA] call and to better use the opportunity to reach a state of national consensus and reconciliation.”
But the necessary circumstances to achieve this goal are not there yet, Mohammad Hijazi, a political analyst based in Gaza, claims.
“The current Israeli government is an extreme right-wing government that will not allow Palestinians to rest and pay attention to their own internal situation,” he told The Media Line. “As we see, there are daily arrests, house demolitions, land confiscations and executions of Palestinians, the latest of which was the painful Jenin massacre that killed 11 Palestinians, including an elderly woman.”
Hijazi believes that the PA invitation to hold an emergency meeting to respond to the new Israeli government’s attitude and the actions of the military will not receive much attention from the Palestinian factions, including the left, because they are fully aware that the real problem lies in the dispute between the big Palestinian rival factions Hamas and Fatah, led by Abbas.
“Without a real and specific price, Hamas will not give up the rule of the Gaza Strip, which is considered to be its political and financial sphere of influence as well. Through its imposition of taxes and money collection, it can finance the movement’s activity and spend on its members and its military wing,” Hijazi said
This price Abbas refuses to pay, according to Hijazi, “is complete political partnership, meaning that Hamas be part of the entire Palestinian political system and enjoy powers equivalent to those of Fatah. Previous agreements did not provide this price for Hamas thus it continues to rule the Strip.”
In fact, even if Abbas agrees to this condition, the United States, the European Union, and even many Arab countries will not accept a Hamas presence in the political system, according to Hijazi.
All these challenges, he added, have put the Palestinian cause at a real impasse, and allowed further hostility and escalatory behavior by the right-wing Israeli government.
“There are racist measures and laws taken by the Israeli government that can explode the situation further. For example, the law banning the raising of the Palestinian flag even in the 1948 occupied Palestinian territories, the law persecuting Palestinians who write their opinions on social media, the executions and deductions from the Palestinian tax funds, which negatively affects the ability of the Palestinian Authority to meet the salaries of its employees, all would light a fuse igniting further violence in the region.” Hijazi concluded.
