Elections without Hamas will be an exercise in futility

Saeb Erekat's resignation as chief Palestinian negotiator is a good thing for potential statehood in September and peace with Israel. This is not as contradictory as it may seem. Without Erekat and his Negotiations Support Unit, the Abbas/Fayyad duo at the helm of the Ramallah-based Palestinian leadership must reconcile their differences with Hamas in Gaza to join forces.

Why? For the simple reason that only together, in a national coalition government that includes all factions, will the Palestinians be able to negotiate from a stronger position. Trying to coerce Hamas into accepting some parameters for peace is not going to work. National reconciliation is the key now.

Prompting Ereket's resignation, the Palestine Papers released by Al Jazeera claim what everyone already knows: that the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) relinquished large swathes of occupied Jerusalem and the West Bank to Israel.

This is not really that controversial. As Shlomo Ben-Ami, former Israeli foreign minister and negotiator at Camp David in 2000, stated on Al Jazeera, there is nothing new about the Palestine Papers: the inclusion of parts of occupied Jerusalem in Israel was one of the Clinton Parameters at Camp David.

Ben-Ami and Erekat both base their popularity on being the closest in history to reaching peace, but neither actually made it happen.

Most important here is not the past, but the present: there is a tremendous opportunity this spring to make this happen. The next Palestinian negotiating team will have to redirect the entire discourse.

Eloquent throughout those ten long years as chief negotiator, Erekat spoke the same repetitious lingo of the perennial peace process based on a two-state solution between a stable Palestine and a secure Israel backed by western powers.

The next negotiator, preferably a well-spoken woman, will have to do what is most pressing: repair the pathetic Palestinian rift between Fatah and Hamas to present a proposal to the United States that all Palestinian factions would endorse and respect for viable statehood by the end of this summer.

In typical fashion, President Mahmoud Abbas called for elections in July 2011. He did this last February as well and Hamas disregarded the June deadline. He did this in October 2009 and Hamas also dismissed the January 2010 date.

Hamas won the January 2006 election by a landslide and only when Fatah agrees to a power-sharing formula will they engage again in democratic exercises. The recent reshuffling of his cabinet is too little too late and will not salvage Fatah's status as representative of the Palestinians. And since Abbas' four-year term as president has expired, he needs to step down now or create a national coalition government with Hamas.

Holding elections without the approval of Hamas would be nonsensical and would only deepen the divide between Gaza and the West Bank. As noted by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights: the terms of the local elected councils expired in May 2005 and the two governments in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank have appointed new councils directly that were close to their respective faction.

Taking a gamble

Abbas' attempt to avoid Hamas and pressure the Gaza-based PNA into agreeing to some pre-emptive unilateral Palestinian state without allowing Hamas to be part of the decision-making process is simply ridiculous and counter-productive. Ultimately, Abbas' gamble will backfire and postpone statehood for the Palestinians even longer.

The Palestinian people deserve a fundamental shift away from the peace process lip-service to real national reconciliation. After carrying out recurrent uprisings against the long Israeli occupation, the Palestinians view the overthrow of Tunisia's Zine Al Abidine Bin Ali and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak as positive developments and could move to show their discontent with their leadership. But rather than calling for Gazans to rise up against Hamas, certain Fatah officials would do better to look in the mirror.

If after creating an effective political platform with Hamas that would be respected by most Palestinians and that could be presented to the US, negotiations still fail to bear any fruit once again, and Israel remains unwilling to make any significant concessions (besides stalling growth of colonies), and a state called Palestine is not officially recognised by the US this summer, then the chances are the Palestinians will revolt.

But if Palestinian leaders can gain some perspective and present a unified front reflecting the consensual will of the people, Washington may push for a Palestinian state

. Without the Mubaraks of the Middle East, this is as much an Israeli imperative as it is a US interest. Abbas will have to show true leadership or simply step aside and make way for a younger generation of Palestinians.

Stuart Reigeluth is managing editor of Revolve magazine while Najat Hirbawi is the production and circulation manager of the Palestine-Israel Journal.