The governing Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas has taken a key step towards recognising Israel after reaching a deal on a crisis-solving plan that implicitly recognises its arch foe’s right to exist.
The deal, seeking to end an acute domestic crisis that has raged since Hamas won elections and took office in March, followed weeks of talks on a blueprint calling for an end to attacks in Israel and a national-unity government.
Acceptance of a clause calling for a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders, rather than in all historic Palestine as officially proclaimed in Hamas’s charter, has been seen by some as implicit recognition of the Jewish state.
However, members of the powerful Islamist movement, which has long advocated the destruction of the Jewish state, denied there was any hint of recognising Israel in the initiative, as drawn up by jailed faction leaders.
”The prisoners’ initiative does not include recognising the legitimacy of the occupation in any clear or straightforward way ” Hamas MP Khalil Abu Leila told AFP, denying that accepting the 1967 borders meant implicit recognition.
”We have said before that Hamas was ready to accept the establishment of a state on land occupied in 1967 in exchange for a truce. It is a well-known position since the time of [spiritual leader] Sheikh [Ahmed] Yassin,” he said.
The international community demands that Hamas recognise Israel, renounce violence and abide by previous signed agreements, with the European Union and United States severing direct aid over its refusal to hitherto oblige.
As a result the Palestinian Authority is facing fiscal meltdown, unable to pay the salaries of the vast majority of its 160 000 employees since late February, exacerbating deadly feuding that sparked fears of civil war.
Despite the potentially enormous ramifications, Israel has remained cautious towards the deal, which preceded a military operation in the Gaza Strip intended to free an Israeli soldier kidnapped by militants, including those from Hamas.
United Nations Middle East envoy Alvaro de Soto has said acceptance of the draft initiative is unlikely to satisfy international demands or bring a lifting of international sanctions imposed on the Hamas administration.
The agreement must still be presented to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya for their signatures.
Gaza-based political science professor Jihad Hamad said he believed the deal amounted to implicit recognition of Israel but that Hamas — for years the masterminds of deadly suicide bombings — was reluctant to lose face.
And Gaza analyst Hassan al-Kashif said: ”I see a change in Hamas’s tactics, but not its strategy,” adding that he expects Hamas to gradually move from a policy of being in opposition towards catering to the practicalities of power.
For the moment there has been no word from Abbas over whether the deal, reached on Tuesday by all factions but the hard-line Islamic Jihad and yet to be formally ratified, would avert a threatened referendum.
The moderate leader, locked in a power struggle with Hamas, vowed to put the initiative to a first Palestinian plebiscite on July 26 without an agreement.
In the occupied West Bank, Nasserdine al-Shaer, Deputy Prime Minister of the Hamas-led government, feted the agreement as a shared programme that the Palestinians could now present to the world, making no mention of recognition.
”It is good thing and a shared programme for all Palestinian parties to show the world that we have a united programme,” he told a news conference.
Yet he accused Israel of trying to make the project fail by tearing it to shreds under the tanks which rolled into the Gaza Strip before dawn in the largest ground operation in the territory since last year’s landmark pullout. — AFP
