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| Members of Hamas’s military wing last week at a site where a search for hostages' bodies is being conducted in Gaza. (Abdel Kareem Hana/AP) |
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| Young Palestinians wear headbands of the Fatah youth movement at a funeral in September for a 20-year-old killed in the West Bank. (Heidi Levine/For The Washington Post) |
Who gets to govern?This spring, even as war in Gaza was still raging, Egyptian officials solicited from Hamas and Fatah the names of about 40 nonpartisan technocrats of Gazan origin. That formed the pool of candidates currently being considered for the committee. In television interviews late last month, Hamas officials, including top political leader Khalil al Hayya, said the group had proposed names but gave other parties, including Egypt, the right to veto any candidate. Hamas was ready to “hand over the reins” to the new Gaza committee and relinquish its weapons to a Palestinian government, Hayya told Al Jazeera. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has dispatched his vice president, Hussein al-Sheikh, and intelligence chief, Majed Faraj, for bilateral discussions with Hayya and others. Although Fatah and Hamas have not clashed over specific candidates, the various Palestinian factions are jockeying over whether the committee will report to the Palestinian Authority and whether the chair of the committee will be a minister from the authority, according to three officials from Fatah and Hamas who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The Palestinian Authority has suggested that Maged Abu Ramadan, the Palestinian health minister in the West Bank, lead the Gazan administration under the authority’s auspices, said two people close to the Fatah leadership. But that proposal has run into objections on several fronts because of concerns about the authority. Abdulfattah Dola, a Fatah spokesman, said the committee must officially be subordinate to the Palestinian Authority. “We are looking for consecrating the principle of one authority and one [point of] reference within the institutions of the State of Palestine,” Dola said. Ghaith al-Omari, an expert on Palestinian affairs at the Washington Institute, said Fatah may be afraid of losing its grip on Palestinian politics and feel threatened by Hamas’s enduring popularity and influence. “Hamas is emerging with the momentum with the end of the war,” Omari said. Fatah “have a fear that they will be forced into a deal that will be more favorable to Hamas.” Fears of a resurgent HamasIn 2007, the two groups went to war in the streets for control of Gaza, with Hamas prevailing. In the ensuing years, the two sides held several rounds of talks about jointly managing the Strip or even reconciliation. Those efforts, often sponsored by Egypt, never led to a real détente. As Gaza’s economy deteriorated during the 2010s under an Israeli blockade, officials in the cash-strapped Hamas government headed by Khaled Meshal sought to reconcile with the Palestinian Authority and hand over certain administrative functions. Meshal asked the authority to pay civil servant salaries, but the West Bank-based government balked at some of the requests. Today, the question of how salaries in Gaza will be paid is again a pressing issue in the talks, said a Palestinian individual who is close to Fatah leadership. The two groups are considering allowing most Hamas employees to stay in their jobs but be overseen by officials from the Palestinian Authority, the individual said. For Israel, nearly every aspect of the inter-Palestinian talks — from the involvement of Hamas in the Gaza committee’s formation to the discussions over Hamas-affiliated bureaucrats and security forces potentially staying in place — is unpalatable. “The fear for Israel is that Hamas will open the gates of Gaza and say to the PA, ‘You’re the boss here. Just bring money to Gaza and you can declare yourself the minister of agriculture or education. Just don’t touch weapons, and we’ll be the dominant player,” said Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli military intelligence analyst of Palestinian affairs. With their shared anxiety over a resurgent Hamas, Netanyahu may actually find an ally in Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, said Khaled Okasha, an Egyptian consultant who has advised Palestinian and Egyptian delegations in ceasefire negotiations. The authority “fears there is a U.S.-Hamas agreement behind the scenes” to the effect that Hamas may be able to play some role in Gaza in the future, Okasha said. “The Palestinian Authority wants more than Israel that Hamas is totally removed from Gaza.” Daniel Shapiro, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, said it’s not clear how the Trump administration will respond to the Gaza committee once it is assembled by Egypt. Washington will ultimately have to give a “thumbs-up or thumbs-down” to a Gazan government that may bear the imprimatur, however subtle, of Hamas, he said. “We might see a technocratic committee that does not have nominal, card-carrying Hamas members but has people who will not work against Hamas’s interests,” Shapiro said. “There is a risk that the end state that emerges will be what we wanted to avoid and something akin to the end of previous Israel-Hamas wars: Hamas is battered and bruised but hanging on to power, preparing for the next round.” Shih reported from Jerusalem, Parker from Cairo and Balousha from Hamilton, Canada. Ari Flanzraich contributed to this report. | ||||