Palestine needs to reunite, and their present leaders should not be allowed to stall their own re-unification agreement to suit their private agendas. The Palestinians need to find one coherent voice with which to face the momentous changes happening around them. It is a self-made disaster that Fatah, which rules the West Bank, and Hamas, which has control in Gaza, have refused to implement the reconciliation agreement more than a year after it was first announced.
In the five years since Hamas seized power in Gaza, the leaderships of both Fatah and Hamas have increased their grip on their respective territories, and are unwilling to lose power to a new united Palestinian National Authority. Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas is still President of the Palestinian National Authority, although his authority only covers the West Bank. Abbas’ elected term as President expired in 2009, although he has since extended his tenure by unilateral decrees, using the split as an excuse.
Abbas has just re-appointed the technocrat Salam Fayyad as Prime Minister, who has won admiration for his determination to seek economic improvement in the West Bank despite the ferocious political problems. And now Fayyad has challenged both Abbas and the Hamas leadership by calling for parliamentary elections in both Gaza and the West Bank ahead of any reconciliation. Fayyad has dismissed the two leaders’ comfortable assumption that elections have to follow reunification. That might suit them very well, as they sit in power and remain unchallenged, but it is not leading to any political improvement.
Managing voting in the two territories will be very difficult, but new elections would offer a way forward out of the present impasse of two leaderships ruling without a mandate, extending their authority by decree. The Palestinians need to present a serious case on how they will fit into the new Arab World with the political changes of the Arab Spring changing the landscape around them. The Netanyahu government has used the split to further its own ends and outmanoeuvred the Palestinians on all counts, increasing its grip on the Occupied Territories.
