RAMALLAH — Mahmoud Al-Abed, 26, has given up trying to secure the passport that would allow him to travel outside of the Gaza Strip to continue his higher education in a Malaysian university. Like many Palestinians in Gaza, Al-Abed doesn’t have a passport because they are supposed to be sent from Ramallah and, due to disputes with the Hamas government, the government there has refused to send passports to Gaza for over a year.

Pope Benedict XVI is greeted by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (R) in the West Bank town of Bethlehem May 13, 2009. Pope Benedict went to the West Bank on Wednesday, offering Vatican support for a Palestinian state alongside Israel and his prayers for an end to Israel’s embargo on the Gaza Strip. REUTERS/Osservatore Romano

Al-Abed had hoped that the positive atmosphere produced by the recent national dialogue sessions would help to dissipate the tension in relations between the Ramallah and Gaza governments, and that as a result the Salam Fayyad government would resume sending passports to Gaza. Yet some Palestinian circles have indicated that President Mahmoud Abbas is studying the possibility of forming an expanded government in the near future, before the dialogue is brought to a close. To Al-Abed, this is a sign that matters are only growing more complicated, and that he and other Palestinians will have to go on bearing the catastrophic outcomes of the domestic rift.
“If they want to form a new government outside of the dialogue’s framework, that means that we’ll have to continue paying the price of this insane strife,” he told Al-Ahram Weekly.

Figures close to Abbas have taken care to feed local media with suggestions that forming an expanded government without agreement has become unavoidable, particularly with Abbas’s imminent travel to Washington to meet U.S. President Barack Obama. The concluding session of the national dialogue is scheduled to take place between Hamas and Fatah representatives on 16 May in Cairo.

Yet the matter doesn’t end there, for the media war between the Salam Fayyad government and Hamas has reached unprecedented levels of intensity. A minister in the Fayyad government has said that toppling Hamas has become a “national, moral, and religious obligation.” In a statement to Israeli radio last Sunday morning, Minister of Agriculture and Social Affairs Mahmoud Al-Habash said that Hamas rule must be toppled “as soon as possible,” and called on the people of Gaza to mobilize through “peaceful means” to achieve this goal. Considered one of the most severe critics of Hamas, Al-Habash added, “Hamas has mercy on no one in the Gaza Strip. It oppresses everyone and prohibits the freedom to express opinions and undertake political activities.”

Hamas spokesperson Fawzi Barhoum has in turn belittled Al-Habash’s statements, saying that Abbas’s steps towards forming a new government equal “a second overthrow of legitimacy.” Barhoum said, “this is a response to American and Israeli dictates issued since the first overthrow of the Hamas government following the democratic elections, an overthrow that was implemented by forming a new government in the West Bank. This is a serious step toward ruining the national dialogue and wasting all the efforts made and achievements reached by the factions, especially in the bilateral meetings between Fatah and Hamas.”

Barhoum considers the formation of any government outside the framework of a national accord to be an “extension of the state of legal and constitutional chaos that Abbas instituted when the Salam Fayyad government was formed without any legal or constitutional basis and without being proposed to the Palestinian Legislative Council or receiving approval for its programs.” Barhoum says that Fatah’s participation in the dialogue has been merely an attempt to pressure Hamas, especially since all of its previous attempts to remove it had failed, including its reliance on the siege, and the isolation and defamation of Hamas, with international support.

Abbas’s intention to form a new government has been rejected not only by Hamas but also by all the Palestinian factions that have taken part in the dialogue. Rabah Mehanna, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) politburo member, holds that the formation of an expanded government without a national accord supporting it would “create a negative atmosphere and won’t benefit Palestinian interests.”

“It will be formed in the framework of bickering between Hamas and Fatah and will deepen the domestic rift, and as a result it will increase the suffering of the Palestinian people,” Mehanna said. He calls for the formation of a temporary national accord government of limited scope that would undertake management of the interim period and address pressing issues such as the reconstruction of Gaza, presidential and legislative elections, revitalizing and building up the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and building Palestinian security agencies on a sound professional basis.

For its part, the Islamic Jihad has asked Abbas to step back from forming a new government, for it considers such a move a “serious attempt to secure the failure of the Palestinian national dialogue in Cairo.” A representative of the Islamic Jihad said that the formation of such a government would create a major obstacle to achieving an accord between Fatah and Hamas. “It’s unreasonable to take just one step forward in just one clause each month, and if things continue at this pace, we’ll need years to reach an agreement on the issues of dispute. This dragging on has frustrated and paralyzed Palestinians and made them lose hope of ever reaching a reconciliation.”

Political analyst Talal Okal is pessimistic about the future of the dialogue due to the declared positions of Fatah and Hamas. “Perhaps the Palestinians should reconcile themselves with the fact that the rift has become a structural reality that forms one aspect of the Palestinian condition,” he says. “This is what happened during the Cyprus crisis that took place more than 30 years ago, and now the dialogue between Palestine’s two organizations has been placed in the context of foreign relations, and each of them is trying to turn the dream into a fable of the distant past,” Okal adds.

“As more sessions of the dialogue take place, hope that they will end in success decreases proportionately. Some people have begun to ignore what is taking place in the dialogues, and have reconciled themselves to the fact that the rift will remain in place, while others have begun to search for ways to accept this as reality,” Okal said. He adds: “As soon as official meetings end, the language of incitement and statements of suspicion return, as do divisive measures that aim to further cement the negative situation.”

Some Palestinian observers still haven’t dismissed the possibility that Abbas’s inner circle may announce his intention to form a new government. This declaration would take place in the framework of placing pressure on Hamas, and in preparation for a final and decisive dialogue session to be held in mid-May in Cairo. These observers believe that Abbas is hoping Hamas will change its position on some of the issues in dispute that the Cairo dialogues have failed to produce agreement on, particularly the issues of the government’s political program, the security agencies, and the electoral system. According to their view, Abbas is hoping that even should Hamas hold firm to its positions on these issues, it will at least accept the Egyptian call for forming a joint committee consisting of representatives from all the factions to oversee the Gaza Strip. The Ramallah government would be the political authority for this committee, and would oversee the committee in its implementation of reconstruction projects in Gaza.

These observers count numerous reasons why the formation of a new government in the West Bank is unlikely at the current time despite what Abbas’s inner circle has been suggesting. At the top of the list are the major differences within Fatah, including the major opposition within Fatah to Fayyad continuing to hold the post of prime minister despite the absence of an alternative accepted by the Americans and Europeans. Fatah leaders are angry about the personal formulation of Fayyad’s current government, whereby most of the ministers are not Fatah members, and they are convinced that if Fayyad is entrusted with forming a new government, he will not appoint figures from Fatah.

These observers also point to another problem facing Abbas, which is the PLO factions’ refusal to join any government that is not formed within the framework of a national accord. This would result in the new government being homogenous and not one that could be considered an “expanded” government. These observers suggest that the criticisms that will be directed at the new government will affect Fatah’s popularity, especially as it would come at a time when Fatah leaders are incapable of agreeing among themselves on setting a date to convene Fatah’s Sixth Congress simply because there are so many differences between them.

-Reprinted from Al-Ahram Weekly.