Precarious balancing act
Abu-Mazen began to put together a government, trying to please Israel, the US and, hopefully, his own people. Khaled Amayreh reports from Hebron
Prime minister-designate of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Mahmoud Abbas, has been consulting with representatives of the various Palestinian political groups, including Fatah, Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and leftist groups, with the aim of putting together a new government.
Abu-Mazen, as Abbas is known, kicked off the week by meeting in Gaza with Hamas leaders, including the groups' chief spokesman in the area, Abdel-Aziz Al-Rantisi, and later with representatives of the more radical Islamic Jihad.
Al-Rantisi described the discussion as "positive", denying reports that Abu-Mazen had asked Hamas to halt attacks against Israel, at least during the Anglo-American war on Iraq.
However, some Islamist sources intimated to Al-Ahram Weekly that Abu-Mazen proposed that Hamas be represented in his evolving government, either directly through the inclusion of some the movement's leaders in the government or indirectly by nominating independent Islamists to assume certain portfolios.
Hamas repeatedly refused to join any PA government, arguing that any Palestinian government formed under the Oslo framework would fail to serve the interests of the Palestinian people.
Moreover, the movement also argued that the very idea of forming a government when the Israeli army occupied every Palestinian town would be an affront to the Palestinian people. "Before any meaningful government can function properly, it has to enjoy a semblance of freedom and authority; in our case there is neither freedom or authority, so why deceive ourselves and the world?" said Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahhar.
Nonetheless, this doesn't mean that Hamas's stance vis-à- vis the government is totally negative. In fact, Hamas is not trying to obstruct Abu-Mazen as he struggles to form a government that he hopes, against almost impossible odds, will be acceptable to the Americans, Israelis, Europeans and the Palestinian people.
Like Fatah, Hamas generally has refrained from carrying out serious guerrilla attacks, including suicide bombings, against Israel since the outbreak of the Anglo-American war on Iraq.
It is not clear if the "de-escalation" was the result of PA pressure on Hamas, or whether it stemmed from a realisation within the Islamist movement that attacks inside Israel would give Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a pretext to take even more drastic measures against the Palestinians.
Islamic Jihad also seems uninterested in burning its bridges with the PA, despite the 30 March suicide bombing in Netanya, which injured some 25 Israelis. The group's leaders declared that the bombing was "a gift" to the Iraqi people, and that it was also meant to mark the 27th anniversary of Land Day on that same day.
The PA strongly condemned the bombing, castigating "whoever stood behind this act". A PA statement, apparently endorsed by Abu-Mazen himself, accused the Islamic Jihad of giving Sharon a pretext to "carry out his diabolic designs against our people". The statement seemed to reflect general Palestinian consternation about suicide bombings inside Israel, especially during the war on Iraq, which they feared Sharon would exploit for his own ends.
These fears have not come to pass, which has allowed the Palestinians to devote their attention and protests to showing solidarity with Iraq.
But Israel is not making things any easier for Abu-Mazen, despite heeding an American request to refrain from carrying out large-scale bloody incursions into Palestinian population centres in the duration of the war on Iraq.
In fact, the Israeli army continued to kill an average of two Palestinians a day, in addition to demolishing homes and arresting dozens of suspected Palestinian activists on a daily basis.
More importantly, the Israeli army continued to seize thousands of acres of privately-owned Palestinian land along the former armistice line between the West Bank and Israel proper.
The confiscation, along with the continuing construction of Jewish settlements, shows that the Israeli prime minister is not taking seriously the much-talked about "roadmap" for peace with the Palestinians.
Nor does Sharon seem interested in seeing US President George W Bush's vision for a "viable and democratic Palestinian state living peacefully along side Israel" fulfilled in any genuine manner. His actions on the ground, especially the continued building on settlements, evidences his rejection of Bush's vision.
This is not to say, though, that Israel is maliciously seeking to abort Abu-Mazen's government before its birth. It is, however, abundantly clear that Israel is trying hard, using military coercion and the American diplomatic hammer, to narrow the horizons of that government.
This approach may backfire since Abu-Mazen will ultimately be answerable to the Legislative Council, which is controlled by hard-line Fatah MPs who could easily vote him out of office in the event he goes too far in accommodating Israeli demands.
Abu-Mazen, then, is in for a difficult time in balancing Israeli and American demands while pursuing those of his own people, namely, a full Israeli withdrawal from all Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 and finding a just solution to the plight of Palestinian refugees.
