Middle EastInfluential PA official says Hamas now accepts two-state solution

Published 24 April 2014

Jibril Rajoub, until 2002 the head of the Preventative Security Force in the West Bank until 2002 and currently a member of the Fatah Central Committee said earlier today (Thursday) that the reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas recognizes the existence of Israel and is based on the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. The reconciliation agreement between the two major political forces in the Palestinian territories was signed in Gaza on Wednesday. The Wednesday announcement threw the already-faltering Israeli-Palestinian negotiations into further jeopardy. Both Israel and the United States condemned the deal, which aims to repair their seven-year conflict between the two Palestinian factions. The Department of State’s spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, called the Palestinian move “disappointing” and the timing “troubling.”

Jibril Rajoub, until 2002 the head of the Preventative Security Force in the West Bank until 2002 and currently a member of the Fatah Central Committee and head of the Palestinian Football Association and Olympic Committee, said earlier today (Thursday) that the reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas recognizes the existence of Israel and is based on the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas, the two major political forces in the Palestinian territories, was signed in Gaza on Wednesday.

The reconciliation that we achieved will be implemented according to the program of Abu Mazen [Palestinian President Mahmuod Abbas] which recognizes the state of Israel,” Rajoub said on the Good Morning Israel program of the IDF Radio.

Haaretz reports that he added that the two-state solution would be based on “a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders and the state of Israel with its capital in West Jerusalem.” Rajoub emphasized that Hamas leader Ismail Haniya “is obliged to uphold Abu Mazen’s policy.”

Rajoub stressed that “when the government is established with Abu Mazen at its head, he will express clearly and unequivocally that he accepts the terms of the Quartet [the United Nations, the United States, the European Union, and Russia] and that his government accepts the two-state solution.”

Haaretz notes that Rajoub expressed doubt that Israel would follow suit. “Netanyahu doesn’t lead a peace government,” he said. “We hear the statements of [Economy Minister Naftali] Bennett, [Foreign Minister Avigdor] Lieberman and [Transport Minister Israel] Katz; which of them accepts the existence of the Palestinian nation?”

We wouldn’t have been prepared — or able — to sign a reconciliation agreement without it being clear to all the Palestinian factions that we are leading our nation to a two-states-for-two-nations solution,” Rajoub emphasized.

The Wednesday reconciliation announcement threw the already-faltering Israeli-Palestinian negotiations into further jeopardy. Both Israel and the United States condemned the deal, which aims to repair their seven-year conflict between the two Palestinian factions.

Israel announced the cancelation of a negotiating session scheduled for Wednesday night.

“Whoever chooses Hamas does not want peace,” the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in a statement, describing the group as “a murderous terrorist organization that calls for the destruction of Israel.”

The New York Times reports that the announcement of the reconciliation pact surprised officials in Washington. The United States has designated Hamas as a terrorist group and forbids direct business or political relations with it.

The Department of State’s spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, called the Palestinian move “disappointing” and the timing “troubling.”

“Any Palestinian government must unambiguously and explicitly commit to nonviolence, recognition of the state of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations between the parties,” Psaki said, citing conditions Hamas has repeatedly rejected. “It’s hard to see how Israel can be expected to negotiate with a government that does not believe in its right to exist.”

The Times notes that beyond the potential damage to the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, the Palestinian Authority’s reconciliation with Hamas could cost the Palestinians millions of dollars in financial aid from the United States and Europe.

Many observers in Washington said the Fatah-Hamas agreement is not going to help the peace negotiations.

Aaron David Miller, a former State Department peace negotiator, told the Times that Abbas had “bought peace at home in exchange for significant tensions with the Israelis” and called the move “one more nail to a peace-process coffin that is rapidly being closed.”

Dennis Ross, another former American peace envoy, said that the move could make Abbas “less susceptible to a domestic backlash for continuing the process with the Israelis,” but that “the timing is very problematic — when the process is already faltering, this could be a body blow.”

Tamara Cofman Wittes, director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said the implications depended on the precise terms of the reconciliation, which have not yet been made public. “If, and it is a big ‘if,’ Hamas comes under the PLO umbrella in such a way that it accedes to the PLO’s recognition of Israel and the PLO’s signed agreements with Israel,” she told the Times, “that would be historic.”

“What would make it horrible is if Hamas were to join the PLO without those kinds of commitments,” Wittes added. “Then it calls into question the PLO’s commitments that it has already made.”