The road to reconciliation in Doha is mined with ‘Noes’

The tenth anniversary of the Palestinians’ political split coincides with ongoing meetings between Hamas and Fatah in Doha, which have been confirmed by Abbas Zaki, a member of the Fatah Central Committee. The Fatah delegation, headed by Azzam Al-Ahmad, has arrived in the Qatari capital for the talks.

The Doha meeting looks lost among the many trips made by both sides over the past decade in an effort to achieve reconciliation. The numerous meetings have resulted in five agreements: one in Makkah, two in Cairo, one in Doha and the most recent in Al-Shati (Beach) Refugee Camp in Gaza signed during the summer of 2014.

The reconciliation train has been held up at its last station in Al-Shati due to a number of obstacles on the line. These include Fatah’s refusal to recognise the legitimacy of the employees hired by Hamas to work for the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip; the failure of the national reconciliation government formed after Al-Shati to recognise the ministries in Gaza or deal with the Gaza Strip; and the president’s refusal to announce the meeting of the leadership and convene the legislative meeting, as stipulated in the agreement. These issues combined to put reconciliation back to square one.

Fatah and Hamas came together nearly 6 months ago at the request of Marwan Barghouti, the Fatah official imprisoned in Israel, who sent a delegation including Mohammed Hourani, Ahmed Ghoneim and Faris Qadoura to re-activate the reconciliation process in Ankara. This resulted in a document outlining a suitable foundation to overcome the obstacles in the way of implementing Al-Shati. This was outlined in Hourani’s statement to Al-Resalah.

The delegations have met twice before in Doha, after the Palestinian request for Qatari mediation. The first meeting was a review of past understandings and the second ended in both sides agreeing on a number of key issues. Hamas official Osama Hamdan told Al-Resalah that these were supposed to be discussed in a third meeting which did not happen.

According to Hamdan, Hamas waited for an official response from Fatah regarding the final issues that were agreed upon in previous meetings. These include the situation of the Gaza employees, which Fatah initially agreed to integrate into the PA’s financial circuit by means of committees that will be formed and tasked with submitting reports to the government. However, we are still waiting for Fatah to confirm this.

The delay in the last meeting was caused by a dispute between PA President Mahmoud Abbas and Azzam Al-Ahmad, who said that he is not authorised to reach understandings with Hamas and all that was asked of him was to “listen to their point of view”. After this delay, which lasted a month, the two parties held a meeting that they agreed to call the “final meeting”. They met to implement what they had agreed upon in the Shati agreement, not to “reach a new agreement”, as stressed by both sides in their press statements. However, the question remains, will the final meeting be able to resolve a division that has lasted over 10 years?

It seems that the answer is probably “No”, according to the statements made by the Hamas and Fatah leaderships and in light of what we know. Fatah has still not agreed or approved a number of pending issues in the reconciliation process, such as the employees’ issue, the government’s political programme, the reactivation of the Palestine Legislative Council and reconvening the leadership in order to discuss the elections and election laws.

Hamdan has confirmed that as far as Hamas is concerned the issue of the 40,000 PA employees in Gaza cannot be overlooked. “No agreement that excludes this issue will be successful,” he explained, “because matters will explode quickly and we will be back to square one; Hamas is not willing to re-live this experience.”

Al-Ahmad responded to this by telling Al-Resalah that “the employees’ issue will be resolved in its natural context.” However, Abbas Zaki insisted that it must be resolved “in stages.” This was explained further by Amin Maqboul. “Hamas’s insistence on recognition of their employees’ issues in advance is hindering the reconciliation,” said the secretary-general of Fatah’s Revolutionary Council.

As for the government’s political programme, despite the fact that the Shati agreement stipulated that it would not be subject to any such programmes, Fatah insists that the PLO’s programme is its main political reference. This is rejected by Hamas, which isn’t part of the PLO and stresses that Al-Shati stipulates that the “national reconciliation programme” will be the political reference for any unity government.

In addition to the two most prominent issues standing in the way of reconciliation, there are many details that hold a number of demons capable of dissolving whatever hope is left for reaching a strong agreement. For example, a leaked statement by Abbas showed that he thinks it is impossible for Hamas to be included in the PLO because it will take over, just as it did when the movement formed the government after the 2006 elections.

“Abbas wants guarantees that Hamas will not take control and dominate the PLO,” said the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Jamil Majdalawi. “Hamas refuses to give such guarantees.” He made his comment to Salam Fayyad during the former PA Prime Minister’s visit to Gaza a few months ago.

Given the unstable environment locally and regionally, it is no surprise that there are thorny issues in amongst all the details. The regional environment is even more complicated given the competition over priorities, with Egypt, which has presented an initiative to end the division, busy with domestic affairs. The facts on the ground also suggest that Egypt’s priority at the moment is ending the division within Fatah before doing anything between Fatah and Hamas. Saudi Arabia, which is apparently keen to host the final stage of the reconciliation process, is also now more concerned with internal problems.

In the light of the facts, therefore, hope for a positive end to the reconciliation process any time soon has all but disappeared. The political programmes and ambitions of Fatah and Hamas are still far from wanting to seek a genuine rapprochement. There are just too many “Noes” mining the road to reconciliation, even in Doha.

Translated from  Alresalah.ps, 15 June, 2016.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.