Abbas Announces Coalition Deal
    By Steven Erlanger and Greg Myre
    The New York Times

    Monday 11 September 2006

    Gaza - The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, said today that he had reached a tentative agreement with Hamas to form a national unity government in an attempt to the end the international isolation and the cutoff in Western assistance.

    In a speech on Palestinian television, Mr. Abbas said that it would still take several days to finish the deal and provided no details of how Hamas and Fatah had resolved their considerable differences.

    "We have finalized the elements of the political agenda of the national unity government," Mr. Abbas said in his speech. "Hopefully, in the coming days we will begin forming the government of national unity."

    While the two factions have agreed on a political program, its details were unclear. It is expected to be limited to this unity government and not commit the Hamas movement to its words. A national unity government will also have representatives of other Palestinian factions like Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said Ghazi Hamad, the spokesman for the current Hamas government.

    "We're trying to make a balance between the requirements of the international community and Palestinian factions," Mr. Hamad said. "For everyone to sit at the same table won't be easy, but we need to do this. We hope it will break the international siege and minimize the tensions on the street."

    Fatah says it is prepared to negotiate with Israel and seeks a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, which would include all of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with a capital in East Jerusalem.

    Hamas, which has always refused to recognize Israel, says that all the land in the region belongs to Muslims. However, Hamas has said it would consider a long-term truce with Israel if a Palestinian state is established on the 1967 borders.

    Aides to Mr. Abbas said today that he hopes to be able to disband the current Hamas government within the next 48 hours, but that the two factions still disagreed over important portfolios. Both are agreed that the current Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniya, will keep his job, and that Fatah will control the Finance Ministry. Fatah also wants to have the Foreign Ministry, but Hamas wants Mahmoud Zahar, a key Hamas leader, to keep the post. Hamas also wants to keep the Interior Ministry.

    Officials said the new government's program would accept all previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements, an implicit recognition of a two-state solution, and call for the negotiation of an independent Palestine within 1967 borders, including Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, on the basis of an Arab League initiative. The document is expected to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization, which has signed all agreements with Israel, as the negotiating representative of the Palestinian people and acknowledge Mr. Abbas's right to negotiate for the Palestinians.

    Mr. Abbas's intention in pressing to form this new government is to regain the funds that have been cut off to Hamas since it took office in late March. Since then, the 165,000 employees of the Palestinian Authority have had less than two months of their salaries paid, causing considerable hardship and a collapse of the economy, especially in Gaza, when combined with the regular closing of crossings into Israel, which Israel says are due to security threats.

    After Hamas formed the government, which Fatah originally refused to join, the United States and the European Union cut direct aid to the Palestinian Authority, and Israel stopped handing over the $50 million a month in taxes and customs receipts collected on behalf of the Palestinians, a major reason for the deficit. All said that the government of Hamas, considered a terrorist group, must first recognize the right of Israel to exist, forswear violence and accept previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements.

    It remains to be seen whether the still-unpublished program of a still unfinished new government will be enough for Israel in particular to hand over funds that now total more than $300 million. The European Union has already suggested, though not explicitly, that it will resume contacts and aid to a unity government, and the United States, which does not give direct budget support, has been wary, but its view will be important in the Israeli decision.

    But a key negotiator, Ziad Abu Amr, a legislator, said that if a new government does not permit the resumption of funds transfers and aid, "there's not much point to the whole exercise."

    The Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, said that if a new Palestinian government accepts the three international conditions "and releases Gilad Shalit," a captured Israeli soldier, "that would create a new momentum in the peace process and put us firmly on the right track."

    But "anything short of that would unfortunately lead to more stagnation that is not good for Israel, not good for the Palestinians and not good for anyone who wants peace in the Middle East," Mr. Regev said.

    The Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, told Israel radio that if the new government does not meet international conditions, and if Mr. Abbas "decides not to take a step in this direction, but rather join something which actually means he is joining a Hamas-led government of terror, then I'm afraid we are going to have a problem."

    Hamas has moved a long distance, Mr. Hamad said. "No one should push them into a corner." Senior European officials have said that an explicit recognition of Israel is not likely to be a requirement, so long as a cease-fire is kept and previous agreements are recognized. Mr. Hamad praised "European flexibility" and confirmed that a political program for a unity government did not commit the Hamas movement to alter its beliefs.

    Hamas recognizes the fact of Israel but refuses to recognize its right to exist, a position repeated by the Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, today, when he said: "Hamas will still have its political agenda. We will never recognize the legitimacy of the occupation," a term that lets Hamas be vague in different moments about whether it means the occupation of land during the 1967 war, or, as its charter insists, Israel's very existence in the region.

    But Mr. Hamad points out that the Israeli Likud Party charter calls for an Israel on both banks of the Jordan River, even as Likud governments have recognized the Olso agreements and a two-state solution.

    Since Fatah and Hamas agreed in principle on a national unity government in June, Mr. Abbas has made several overly optimistic statements indicating that a deal was close. But he has had support from the European Union and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who is normally considered close to the American position.

    Mr. Abbas had put key questions to Mr. Haniya 10 days ago and reportedly threatened to dismiss the current government if it did not agree to work with Fatah to end the international aid freeze for the benefit of ordinary Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority has a monthly wage bill of about $120 million, the largest part of a monthly budget of some $165 million.

    The mere formation of a unity government would not appear to meet the demands set by Israel and the Western countries, so much will depend on what the program of the government actually says.

    Broke and isolated, largely due to Israeli and American policy, the Hamas government has been ineffective since coming to power. Israel has arrested dozens of Palestinian legislators and several cabinet ministers from Hamas.

    And at the beginning of this month, many Palestinian schoolteachers went on strike at the beginning of the school year. Fatah and its unions encouraged the strike as a way to put further pressure on Hamas. Today, however, Mr. Abbas called for the strike to end.

    "We call for a return to work and the end of the strike because all the sons of the Palestinian people should unite in the national interest," Mr. Abbas said.