A dramatic reconciliation in the Middle East

Ever since it collapsed into chaos, Syria has been the focus of concern in the Middle East, and the plight of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip has been all but forgotten. Yet Gaza has been under virtual siege since 2007, said Yossi Mekelberg in Arab News (Jeddah). That was when the hard-line Islamist group Hamas took control, following its shock election victory over its secularist rival Fatah, the longdominant party of President Mahmoud Abbas (and before him Yasser Arafat). So Palestinians are now ruled by two rival and antagonistic governments: by Hamas in Gaza; and by the Palestinian Authority, controlled by Fatah, in the West Bank.

But last week something rather extraordinary happened. Hamas and Fatah signed a preliminary reconciliation deal, enabling the Palestinian Authority to take back full control of Gaza by 1 December. In exchange, Abbas will lift the restrictions on electricity supplies that have made life almost unbearable for Gaza’s 1.8 million residents in recent months. It’s not as if they weren’t suffering enough before that, said Al Jazeera (Doha). For a decade, Gaza has been blockaded by Israel to the north and east and Egypt to the south: as a result, unemployment is at 42% – rising to 58% for those under 30. It has also been subject to chronic water shortages. Israel’s bombardment of Gaza in 2014, which caused appalling damage to homes and businesses, then made things that much worse. One UN agency has gone so far as to say that in three years, the territory will be “uninhabitable”. Until recently, Qatar had provided cash to build roads and houses, but now that it has been forced by Saudi Arabia and other angry Arab neighbours to abandon Hamas, that source of support has dried up too.

Reconciliation with Fatah was the only option left for Hamas, said Pierre Magnan in France Info (Paris). It was also the option being pushed by President Sisi of Egypt, who is brokering the talks. Sisi has always wanted rid of Hamas, which began life as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group being ruthlessly suppressed inside Egypt. Cairo has also been alarmed that Hamas might lend support to the growing Islamist insurgency in Sinai – a big tourist area: hence, its obdurate refusal to open the border crossing into Gaza at Rafah.

Oddly enough, for all its Islamist credentials, Hamas has a strongly pragmatic streak, said Gershon Baskin in The Jerusalem Post. It spits venom at Israel’s government, yet has reliably stuck to the 2014 ceasefire agreement, arresting rogue elements that shoot rockets into Israel. And Gaza’s new prime minister, Yahya Sinwar, has brought the group’s squabbling political and military wings under his direct control. He clearly sees the relationship with Egypt, not Iran, as crucial to Hamas’s future, and is willing to do what Sisi wants, even if it means detaching the group from the Muslim Brotherhood and handing over Salafist activists taking refuge in Gaza.

Talk of reconciliation is making Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu nervous, said Julio Segador in Deutschlandfunk (Berlin): he has long used the split between the Palestinians as an excuse to avoid negotiating with them. Israeli security experts also worry that Palestinian unity could restart a terror offensive. Yet Israel can hardly oppose the talks: Gaza is a source of bitter criticism against it from abroad, and the Israeli public is increasingly uneasy about the “catastrophic” humanitarian situation there. There are, however, many reasons why the talks might collapse, as they have so often before – not least the demand by Abbas that Hamas disband its military force. That’s a non-starter as long as the conflict with Israel continues. We must wait to see whether this is another false dawn or the start of a new chapter.