Six Questions for Mouin Rabbani

Middle East Research and Information Project

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Six Questions for Mouin Rabbani

by The Editors | published April 24, 2014

Yesterday in Gaza representatives of Hamas and the Palestine Liberation Organization announced a blueprint for talks about forming a government of national consensus (Arabic text here). Hamas and the PLO’s dominant Fatah faction have been at loggerheads, and occasionally at war, since 2007, when the Islamist movement expelled Fatah security men from their Gaza posts and took over the coastal strip. The political antipathy is far older, of course, and was sharpened greatly by the willingness of President Mahmoud ‘Abbas and his Ramallah wing of the Palestinian Authority to countenance and assist the international blockade of Gaza that was tightened like a vise upon Hamas’ victory in 2006 legislative elections. Since then, there have been parallel PA administrations in the West Bank and Gaza, with Hamas kept outside the periodic attempts to revive Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on a comprehensive peace. Another such attempt commenced earlier this year under the auspices of Secretary of State John Kerry, who set an April 29 deadline for an agreement. Israel reacted to yesterday’s news by canceling a working negotiators’ meeting that was slated for the evening. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said, “It’s hard to see how Israel can be expected to negotiate with a government that does not believe in its right to exist,” and hinted that US aid to the Ramallah PA might be in jeopardy. We asked our contributing editor Mouin Rabbani, a veteran observer of the Palestinian political scene, for his thoughts.