The two biggest benefits that will come from the Hamas and Fatah landmark reconciliation deal newly signed in Cairo will be reuniting the Palestinian people, which in turn will help greatly toward a peace deal with Israel.
If the deal holds, it would end a decade-long rift that began with violent clashes between the two Palestinian groups Fatah and Hamas in 2007 after Hamas won parliamentary elections in the occupied territories a year earlier and reinforced its power in Gaza after ousting Fatah from the strip. In those ten years, Fatah, the party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, has been governing the West Bank, while Hamas has been running Gaza.
The existence of two leaderships for the Palestinian people dealt a devastating blow to the Palestinian cause. The face of the Middle East will not be the same once this hotbed of trouble ceases to exist.
Domestically, the deal raises hopes among Gaza’s two million residents that humanitarian conditions will improve. Electricity is available for only a few hours a day. Barely one in 10 residents has access to safe drinking water through the public water network, and the United Nations projects that Gaza’s aquifer may become unusable at the end this year. There are also the tens of thousands of civil servants employed by the PA have been out of work since Hamas took control of Gaza.
The reconciliation process will be carried out in three phases. The first involves the dissolution of Hamas’ Administrative Committee, formed six months ago to govern Gaza and which Fatah saw as a direct challenge to its authority, resumption by a national consensus government of taking over responsibilities in Gaza and preparations for general and presidential elections.
In effect, Hamas will now allow the Ramallah-based Palestinian government to take over public institutions in Gaza. This is a massive concession by Hamas that could help end the blockade of goods and other aids to Gaza. Handing over control of the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt to the Fatah-backed government, and the imminent stationing of Fatah forces in the Gaza Strip by year’s end is another Hamas climbdown of major significance.
However, the fate of Hamas’ security forces and 25,000-strong military wing has been one of the thorniest issues preventing reconciliation and remains to be resolved. It is of critical importance who ultimately controls security in Gaza. Hamas’ arms are as big a concern for Abbas as they are for Israel. In this regard, considering the situation in North Sinai, where Egypt has been fighting terrorist groups for the past four years, Egypt has agreed to overcome its past disputes with Hamas, known for its support of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, on condition that the latter would not allow Gaza to become a safe haven for forces who target the Egyptian army in North Sinai.
Perhaps more than at any other time in recent history, there is a conviction that today there is a golden opportunity to establish peace in the Middle East after the region has been torn apart by conflicts in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. With the entire region in turmoil and the disintegration of several key Arab states such as Iraq, Syria and Libya, the Palestinian cause has been mostly ignored. This led to a sharp deterioration in the living conditions of the Palestinian people, especially in the Gaza Strip where 2.5 million people live, and gave Israel a chance to expand tremendously its settlement activity in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Even the US, which lists Hamas as a terrorist group, is on board with the accord. So whereas there have been several failures in the past to reconcile Hamas and Fatah, this looks like the real deal, if only because President Donald Trump, who fervently seeks a Palestinian-Israeli peace deal, sees Hamas’ acquiescence as a catalyst toward achieving that goal.
