Via the BBC: Abbas sacks Hamas-led government
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has dismissed the Hamas-led government and declared a state of emergency, reports say.Aides to Mr Abbas said the president will call elections as soon as possible in an effort to end fighting between Hamas and Fatah in the Gaza Strip.
Mr Abbas will now rule the West Bank and Gaza by presidential decree.
Of course, this is hardly a simple call for early elections:
The BBC’s Matthew Price in Jerusalem says that once the decree is signed, the West Bank and Gaza Strip will effectively be split from one another - Gaza run by Hamas and the West Bank by Fatah.
Indeed, I seem to recall that there a question at some point in the past about whether Abbas had the right to call early elections.
Not that legal debates are all that relevant at the moment, of course. Via the BBC from earlier today:
Hamas militants have hailed a series of military victories over rivals Fatah in the Gaza Strip as a new “liberation” of the territory.Fighters seized Fatah’s Preventative Security building in Gaza City and the intelligence service headquarters, and overran the town of Rafah.
A least 20 Palestinians died as the latest battles raged throughout Gaza.
If the Palestinians cannot find a way to peacefully cooperate amongst themselves, it certainly makes the notion of a Palestinian state, let alone peace with Israel, seem like true pipe dreams.
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It seems Hamas is being forced to accept the two-state solution after all: The Hamas state and the Fatah state.
There is no formal power for the president to dissolve parliament. Abbas indeed issued a decree some months ago on dissolution anyway, but I assume it was revoked once the “unity” government was formed. So much for unity…
While the Palestinian factions have indeed not shown much capacity for governance, the conditions of an international boycott, noncontiguous territory, and ongoing Israeli military bombardment of the infrastructure do not exactly create the conditions out of which one expects democracy and good governance to spontaneously emerge.
Comment by MSS — Thursday, June 14, 2024 @ 5:26 pm
“If the Palestinians cannot find a way to peacefully cooperate amongst themselves, it certainly makes the notion of a Palestinian state, let alone peace with Israel, seem like true pipe dreams.”
I really don’t know how you can say such a thing.
MSS is quite right as to conditions in Palestine, but I don’t agree that Hamas has not shown much capacity for governance. They didn’t have the slightest chance in the first place, did they?
Comment by james — Thursday, June 14, 2024 @ 6:12 pm
I agree with Matthew and am quite sympathetic to the formation to a Palestinian state.
However, I am at a loss why you find my statement to be so surprising. Fatah and Hamas are not being forced to fight one another. And, without a doubt, the chances for a Palestinian state and for some semblance of peace cannot be achieved if Fatah and Hamas are going to engage in internecine warfare. What is so shocking about acknowledging that fact.
Comment by Dr. Steven Taylor — Thursday, June 14, 2024 @ 7:32 pm
My point is that the current chaos has been motivated largely by the US and Israel (as one would expect) and by the EU (sadly). I suppose you could say that it’s really the Palestinians fault for playing at democracy but voting the wrong party into government. Fatah and Hamas don’t have to fight, but the conditions propitious to fighting have been crafted by the other players in the region.
Saying that Palestinian infighting will not allow peace with Israel does not much make sense to me. It seems that you are suggesting that what the Palestinians do or don’t do actually matters. I would say that the history of the region proves otherwise. You also end up minimizing the role of the other players in that region, when they brought the situation about and could, just as easily, change matters around once more.
This particular cycle of violence is a symptom, not a cause of the problems that plague this region.
Comment by james — Thursday, June 14, 2024 @ 8:34 pm
My statement was that a Palestinina state, let alone regional peace, is impossible if Fatah and Hamas are going to kill one another. That strikes me as a bald fact. The other issues are the other issues, and it may well be that they make peace impossible. However, I was making a narrow point.
Comment by Dr. Steven Taylor — Thursday, June 14, 2024 @ 9:31 pm
Little recognized is that the Palestinian people did not endorse the Hamas program of no peace until Israel surrenders its very reason for being (and let’s be frank, that is its program). The Palestinian people–and only 44% of them or 3 percentage points more than voted for Fatah–voted quite literally for “change and reform” (which was the electoral label Hamas ran under, cultivating an image of anti-corruption). It is sad to think of what a little wise political engineering could have done: with a proportional representation system, Hamas would never have “won” so big, and it probably would have refused cabinet seats and constituted an opposition to an Abbas-appointed “technocratic” cabinet. Perhaps it would be naive to suggest that such conditions could have led to serious peace talks. But I do not think so. There was considerable–and in my assessment, justified–optimism as the elections approached.
Hamas “won” big, thanks to the hugely disproportional electoral system–and the immediate international reaction (international, not just US and Israeli) was to shun and then later boycott Hamas. It was a stupid policy, because there might have been a chance at weening a parliamentary Hamas leadership away from the Syrian-based rejectionists–but Hamas is what Hamas is: a rejectionist organization in full control of the legislative institution of an increasingly dysfunctional state-in-waiting. And Steven is right that the waiting will only go on so long as the two sides are at war with one another.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian people–the 56% who did not vote for Hamas and the vast majority who do not take up arms–are the real victims. It is a tragedy.
Comment by MSS — Friday, June 15, 2024 @ 5:22 pm