Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu blasted the emerging reconciliation agreement
between Hamas and Fatah on Monday, sending a clear message to the international
community that if it is consummated, the Israeli-Palestinian diplomatic process
is over.
One reason for Netanyahu’s sharp response to reports of a deal –
he made it a point to make his remarks both in Hebrew and in English – was to
get the international community to pressure Palestinian Authority President
Mahmoud Abbas not to implement it, one government official
acknowledged.
“Anyone in the international community concerned about the
peace process should be intervening now with the Palestinians to prevent the
consummation of this marriage,” the official said.
The agreement, reached
between Fatah and Hamas under the auspices of Qatar, calls for Abbas to serve as
an interim prime minister of a Palestinian unity government made up of
independent figures.
The government’s primary job would be to prepare for
presidential and parliamentary elections, and to rebuild the Gaza
Strip.
After the agreement was reported, the Prime Minister’s Office
distributed a “special statement” by Netanyahu, saying that in recent weeks he
and “several world leaders” have made serious efforts to advance
peace.
“If President Abbas moves to implement what was signed today in
Doha, he will abandon the path of peace and join forces with the enemies of
peace,” Netanyahu said. “Hamas is an enemy of peace. It’s an Iranian-backed
terror organization committed to Israel’s destruction.”
Saying Abbas
can’t have it both ways, and has to choose either a peace pact with Israel or
with Hamas, the prime minister reiterated that Hamas had not yet accepted the
three minimal requirements demanded of it by the international community: to
recognize Israel’s right to exist, abandon terrorism, and accept previous
Israeli-Palestinian agreements.
Instead, Netanyahu said, Hamas “continues
to arm itself for even deadlier terrorism.”
Government officials said
efforts over the last couple of weeks to put together a package of economic
steps as an incentive to keep the Palestinians at nascent, low-level talks in
Jordan, have now been put on hold.
“Now we are waiting to see what will
be with this agreement,” the official said. “We are making it clear that this
agreement would be a body blow to the whole process.
This sort of
agreement could lead to the end of the peace process.”
He characterized
the move as a major “confidence destroying measure.”
In 2006, following
Hamas’s victory in the Palestinian legislative elections and Ismail Haniyeh’s
appointment as prime minister, Israel stopped working with the PA government and
halted the transfer of monthly tax revenue it collected for the PA.
A
spokesman at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, asked about what Washington’s policy
would be if the Doha agreement was implemented, said the US would not articulate
a “formal position on a speculative event. We will wait to see what
happens.”
The spokesman reiterated the US policy that Hamas must accept
the international community’s three conditions has not changed.
The EU
also did not have a formal reaction on Monday to the Fatah-Hamas
moves.
At the end of November, however, after a previous round of
reconciliation talks, the EU issued a statement saying it has “consistently
called for reconciliation under Abbas’s authority.”
The statement said it
considered reconciliation “an opportunity rather than a threat,” and that
Palestinian unity was “an important element for a viable Palestinian state, and
essential for securing a lasting peace with Israel.”
At the same time,
that statement said the EU expected a new Palestinian government to uphold the
principles of nonviolence, remain committed to a twostate solution, and
negotiate a peaceful settlement with Israel, while accepting previous agreements
and recognizing Israel’s right to exist.