Free_Iran_Now

Tuesday, February 21, 2006 The confusion about Hamas intentions continues: while Khaled Mashal visits Tehran and is quoted as saying that Iran will have an 'expanded role in Palestine's future' and 'political negotiations with Israel would be a waste of time' back on the ground in the Palestinian territories, Hamas spokesmen continue to talk about forming a 'national unity' government that would include Fateh, which insists on Hamas agreeing to a two-state solution and a political peace process.
Meanwhile, despite Israeli government rhetoric about cutting ties with the Palestinian 'terrorist entity,' IDF commanders on the ground continue maintaining contacts with their PA counterparts, to prevent misunderstandings that could escalate into widespread violence. And Hamas is meanwhile not responding to ongoing Israeli military operations in the Nablus area, aside from general condemnations of the occupation. The IDF has uncovered a bomb-making factory in Balata, the Nablus refugee camp. But most of the arrests -- and killings, when arrests are resisted -- so far are of Islamic Jihad and rogue Fateh activists.
In short, there is the rhetoric of Israel's election season and the Hamas doctrine, and the reality of what takes place on the ground in the troubled Holy Land. Mashal, for example, is predicting that if the West stops providing the PA with money, Islamic states would step in to help. But the entire Arab world aid to the Palestinian Authority last year was barely $200 million, and while Tehran might sound like it is making promises of aid, it also attaches Shiite fundamentalist strings that it is not at all clear that Sunni Palestinian society could tolerate.
More importantly, so far, no money has been withheld from the PA except by the World Bank, which is furious with Fateh economic policies that overspent its budget by $900 million over the past year as PA President Mahmoud Abbas raised salaries for the tens of thousands of PA employees in both military and administrative positions. Any reading of the wage increases leads to suspicion that Abbas tried 'election economics' -- paying voters for their loyalty -- and of course failed, largely because of mismanagement of Fateh.
Furthermore, while Israel does collect about $50 million a month on behalf of the PA in mostly VAT and customs, it deducts monies owed Israeli companies by the PA, for such basic infrastructure as electricity, water, medicines, and other services provided to the PA by Israeli firms. According to reports in the economic pages of the Israeli press, at least $15 million a month is deducted from the monies Israel collects. True, $35 million is a lot of money, but it takes a lot more than that to pay salaries for some 150,000 PA employees, even before they received the wage hikes that so angered the World Bank that it cut off funding to the PA. As for claims that by withholding the money Israel would be driving the Palestinian economy over the edge into utter distress, the real cutoffs that hurt the Palestinian economy, particularly the Gazan one, are when the border crossings for merchandise at Erez and Karny between Gaza and Israel, are shut down for weeks at a time because of security alerts of various kinds -- or in response to any terror attack inside Israel. Notably, there have not been any terrorist attacks inside Israel for months. The Israeli security services claim credit for that, but the Palestinians attribute the quiet to the tahadiye, the pan-Palestinian ceasefire hammered out last year in Cairo. Only Islamic Jihad, some rogue Fateh cells, and the 'Popular Resistance Committees' of southern Gaza refuse to abide by the ceasefire.
Despite the angry rhetoric from Israeli officials, so far Jerusalem's policy seems to be the same as the rest of the West -- waiting to see what kind of government emerges in the PA. Behind the smiles at last night's meeting between PA President Mahmoud Abbas, and Hamas candidate for prime minister Ismail Haniye, is a struggle between Abbas - who is also chairman of the PLO, which formally is the representative of the Palestinians in any peace negotiations with Israel -- and Hamas over powers in the PA.
Abbas still is trying to maneuver to have control of at least some of the Palestinian security forces, and is still trying to twist Hamas arms into accepting Fateh's terms for entering a national unity government. Hamas spokesmen meanwhile are talking about a 'government of technocrats' meaning ministers with training in their respective fields, and without direct affiliation with Hamas, as a way of circumventing international repudiation of a Hamas government. There is even talk of Hamas giving the prime minister's position to a compromise candidate.
But it all might be premature to speculate on the Hamas government. The five weeks that Haniye has been given to form a government will last longer than the rest of the Israeli election campaign. There are persistent rumors that the Hamas wants to wait until after Israel's political map is finalized in these elections before forming a Palestinian government. Maybe, like Amir Peretz, they believe that the Israeli elections will be decided in the last two weeks of campaigning and that the polls showing Kadima as the next ruling party are misleading. We'll see.