By IPS Correspondents
JERUSALEM, Mar 21 2006 (IPS)

The new militant government of the Palestinian people failed to entice opposition parties to join a coalition, a fact many predict will make it hard for Hamas to govern.

The heart of the issue is that despite tweaking its political platform at the request of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas still dismisses Israel’s existence and international pleas to give up violent resistance to end the occupation.

Hamas last Sunday presented its political programme and a list of cabinet members to Abbas, but Parliament will likely not be asked to approve them until after Israel’s Mar. 28 general election.

The proposed government is made up of 24 ministers from the academic world and the civil service. It includes a woman and a Christian.

Hamas’s much-awaited political plan states it will cooperate with the international community to facilitate the creation of a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders, meaning it will want to regain control of Gaza and the West Bank, and have Jerusalem as its capital.

Hamas has also said it will accept only those past peace agreements that protect Palestinian rights, and that it wants the right of return for Palestinians who were forced to flee their lands years ago.

“I personally would have preferred a coalition government – a government that will represent what is general between these political factions,” Walid Mustafa, dean of the faculty of humanities at Bethlehem University in the West Bank told IPS.

“A coalition would have come across as moderate and be representative of more than one party,” Mustafa said. “You can be more pragmatic.”

Although media reports suggested that the U.S. government had urged the opposition to steer clear of a Hamas coalition or risk U.S. alienation, Mustafa rejected this as a factor in the inability to patch together a government of all political stripes.

What bothers Mustafa is that so many civil servants have been vaulted to Cabinet posts. “A minister should be a politician. Technocrats (civil servants) are not elected members of the Parliament. He can’t do what he wants.”

The lack of a coalition government may lead to economic sanctions, now that what is widely deemed a terrorist group is in power. The World Bank this month warned of severe unemployment among Palestinians if the world just shut off the financial aid taps.

The international community, which underwrites the bulk of the PA’s one-billion-dollar budget, has threatened since January’s elections to slash aid if Hamas insists on maintaining a hard-line stance towards Israel.

That said, however, the European Union this week gave the United Nations 78 million dollars in emergency assistance for Palestinians, but it warned future aid may be curtailed.

Many Arab governments are giving money to Hamas to appease their populations but political support may not come with the package, says Naseef Muallem, director-general of the Palestinian Centre for Peace and Democracy in Ramallah.

The United States has sought to sidestep Hamas-led institutions while sending more aid to ease the plight of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Already Hamas, which promises in its manifesto to alleviate unemployment and poverty, faces economic problems linked to Israel’s occupation. “Palestinians have very high expectations for Hamas, and Hamas can’t solve their problems,” Muallem told IPS.

He said international investors have been deterred already by checkpoint closures and the security barrier running through part of the country.

With international isolation looming, Hamas will be hard-pressed to secure an independent state without an international mechanism pressuring Israel to respect the legitimacy of the Palestinian government, Muallem said.

He said Hamas must battle an image – created by militants and the Israeli media – by which Palestinians have been transformed from “people who are fighting an occupation into terrorists.”

Israel warned long ago it will break contact with the PA if Abbas approves the new government.

Mustafa believes Israel’s demand for recognition will come in time. “The reality of the situation will have its influence on both of us – on the Israelis and the Palestinians.”

Amid all of these problems is the lingering question of Mahmoud Abbas’s future in Palestinian politics.

“Mahmoud Abbas has been relevant through and through,” Mustafa Abusway, professor of philosophy and Islamic studies at Jerusalem-based Al-Quds University told IPS. “It’s unfortunate (Israeli foreign affairs minister) Tzipi Livni could not see this. She bombarded the press with: ‘Mahmoud Abbas is irrelevant’.”

Abusway said Abbas aims to get in place an acceptable cabinet line-up, and a Hamas political statement that is in line with his beliefs and follows the peace roadmap negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Although Palestinian politicians called for Abbas’s resignation after Israel’s raid of a Jericho prison holding suspected killers of an Israeli cabinet minister, Abusway doubts he will depart Fatah because of the incident.

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