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The tug-of-war over Palestine
The US and Israel want the national unity government to fail, while the Arabs and Europeans see it as the best way out of the crisis.
- By Patrick Seale, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 00:00 March 23, 2007
At this fragile stage of its young life, the Palestinian national unity government is facing a moment of danger. It has been welcomed here and there with smiles and handshakes, contacts with several countries have been established, but one vital thing is lacking: money.
Unless international aid is resumed promptly allowing the new government to function, the Fatah-Hamas alliance is likely to fall apart and violence could again engulf the Palestinian territories. Much blood has flowed between the two rival Palestinian organisations and their ideological differences remain intense. Unless their joint government is given a chance, internal contradictions could bring it down.
But international donors remain indecisive. They want to see how the government performs before committing themselves to renewed funding. It is a chicken-and-egg situation.
The stark reality of the situation is that without an injection of funds, the Palestinian government will be unable to pay the salaries and pensions of its employees - a bill amounting to $115 million a month which keeps the economy afloat. Health workers went on strike this week because of unpaid wages. The private sector is in ruins and many companies have left the territories.
Israel is hoping that the new government will collapse. It has adamantly refused to deal with it and has called on the international community to maintain its boycott. It wants Hamas to be destroyed not recognised. The US, however, is divided on the issue. In an almost unprecedented move, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has departed a small way from the Israeli position. She is returning to the region this week and has expressed a readiness to meet non-Hamas members of the new government.
On her instructions, the US Consul in Occupied Jerusalem, Jacob Walles, travelled this week to Ramallah to meet the Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayyad. The Israeli government has maintained a stony silence.
Concessions
Back in Washington, a hawk such as Eliott Abrams at the National Security Council, firmly committed to the Israeli side of the argument, is said to be opposed to any concessions to the new government.
Last month's Makkah agreement between Fatah and Hamas, brokered by Saudi Arabia, appears to have taken the US and Israel by surprise and made them uncertain on how to react. They seem to be playing for time, no doubt in the hope that the new government will not survive.
Certainly, it will be hard for the new team to govern if Israel continues to refuse to hand over Palestinian tax revenues of some $50 million a month, which it is illegally withholding and if the United States continues to threaten Arab banks with sanctions if they transfer money to the Palestinian territories.
A trial of strength is thus under way between those in the US and Israel who want the new experiment to fail, and Arabs and Europeans who see the new government as the best way out of the crisis.
The Europeans, however, are as usual divided. Some EU members, France, Spain and Belgium among them, are ready to talk to independent members of the new government, such as Foreign Minister Ziad Abu Amr and Finance Minister Salam Fayyad. But talking to the national unity government without resuming aid is playing into the hands of those who want the government to fail.
Saudi Arabia's energetic diplomacy in the Palestinian arena is one of the more promising features of the regional scene. This week, King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz received Khalid Mesha'al, the Damascus-based head of Hamas's political bureau. The Arab Summit in Riyadh at the end of this month is widely expected to re-launch the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative which offers Israel peace and normal relations with all 22 members of the Arab League if it withdraws to its 1967 borders.
Important change
According to sources in London, Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair is cautiously considering talking to Hamas. This would be an important change in British policy and would encourage other European countries to end the boycott. But Blair has not yet publicly challenged the American and Israeli position.
In an unusual move, however, he wrote a letter on March 12 to King Mohammad VI of Morocco, the chairman of the Al Quds Committee, stating explicitly that Britain does not recognise sovereignty over any part of Occupied Jerusalem.
Although this has long been Britain's official position, observers in London say that this is the first time that Blair has made such a strong legal statement on the subject, in marked contrast with the US and Israeli position. His letter may reflect his private irritation at Israel's hardline stance and his wish to make his position clear before he leaves office in the coming months.
Deeply committed to the cause of Israeli-Palestinian peace, Norway is the only European country so far to declare that it is establishing full political and economic relations with the new Palestinian unity government. As Norway is not a member of the EU, it is not constrained by the Quartet's conditions for dealing with Hamas -conditions in fact dictated by the United States.
Aid for the Palestinians has become a contentious issue. The situation today seems to be that a slow erosion of the boycott is taking place, while the international community waits to see how the Palestinian government performs. If, in spite of the great difficulties it faces, it shows itself to be reasonably competent, aid will eventually come through. But can the government survive in the meantime? If the world fails to act, chaos and violence will be the inevitable consequences.
As ever, Israel is the main obstacle to stability in the occupied territories and to progress on the peace front. The latest polls suggest that more than 50 per cent of Israelis would favour a dialogue with the new Palestinian government, but the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has neither the will nor the courage to take up the challenge. It is likely that only a powerful combined push by the Europeans and the Arabs, supported however reluctantly by the US, will bring Israel to the negotiating table.
Patrick Seale is a commentator and author of several books on Middle East affairs.
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