CHALLENGES 2007-2008: Two Territories, No Nation

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Peter Hirschberg

JERUSALEM, Jan 2 2008 (IPS) - The year begins after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas renewed peace talks with Israel that had been frozen for seven years and agreeing with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to make every effort to forge a peace deal by the end of 2008 that would ensure the Palestinians an independent state.

But despite the resumption of talks, Palestinians may well feel that their dream of an independent state has become more remote. That’s because of a dramatic event in June that left the West Bank and Gaza Strip – the areas the Palestinians want as a future state – not just separated by geographical distance, but each with its own distinct and rival governing entity.

In several bloody days in June, Hamas forces routed their more moderate Fatah counterparts, with whom they were supposed to be sharing power – an arrangement that came into effect after the Islamic movement swept to power in parliamentary elections in early 2006.

Fatah leaders accused Hamas of treason, and Abbas said they had carried out a coup. “Hamas dug their grave with their own nails as a result of the crimes they carried out in Gaza,” said Abbas, who dismissed the Hamas government and appointed a new prime minister from Fatah ranks. “They have brought upon themselves their loss of legitimacy.”

Hamas leaders, who refused to recognise Abbas’s decision to dismiss them, accused their Fatah rivals of being in league with the West and with Israel.

The U.S., Israel and other western states responded by clamping sanctions on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Unless the Islamic movement recognised Israel and renounced violence, it would remain isolated, politically and economically, they declared.

By contrast, western countries made soothing overtures to Abbas, and Israel released some Palestinian prisoners – almost all from his Fatah party – in a bid to bolster the Palestinian leader. At the same time, Olmert told Abbas that if he tried to engage Hamas in dialogue, he would face similar isolation.

It soon became apparent that Hamas was not about to relinquish control of the coastal strip, and a new reality had emerged, with the Abbas-led Fatah ruling the West Bank and the Islamic movement in control of Gaza.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak hosted a conference in the Red Sea port of Sharm el-Sheikh in late June, attended by Olmert and Abbas, with the unwritten agenda of bolstering the anti-Hamas forces. Then came the Annapolis summit in Maryland at the end of the year, in which the two leaders agreed to restart peace talks.

But the question on everyone’s lips was whether a deal could be cut without the inclusion of Hamas. How would Abbas, having negotiated a peace deal with Israel, be able to impose it in Gaza where he does not have any control?

Most pressing for Palestinians, though, was the continued decline in their living conditions. A World Bank report released in December painted a bleak picture of life in the occupied territories. Unemployment and poverty have worsened dramatically since 2000 when the second Intifadah (the name given to militant Palestinian uprising) erupted, prompting an Israeli military crackdown – including severe restrictions on movement – that has shattered the Palestinian economy.

Gross domestic product per capita in the territories dropped by 40 percent between 1999 and 2006 to 1,130 dollars, and the Palestinians have become increasingly dependent on aid handouts. According to the World Bank, “GDP is being increasingly driven by government and private consumption from remittances and donor aid, while investment has fallen to exceedingly low levels, leaving little of the productive base needed for a self-sustaining economy.”

In Gaza, where Israel has almost completely stopped the flow of goods in and out, in an effort to weaken Hamas and deter militants from firing their rockets, the situation is worse. Families survive on aid handouts and the economy has completely collapsed. According to one World Bank yardstick, some two-thirds of the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza now live in poverty.

In December, donor nations gathered in Paris for a conference aimed at reviving the shattered Palestinian economy. They pledged 7.4 billion dollars over the next three years. If the Israeli closure policy remains in place, however, the World Bank predicts that “even with full funding…growth will be slightly negative, at around minus 2 percent per year.”

Tony Blair, special envoy for the Quartet (U.S., Britain, EU and UN) to the Middle East, has been stressing to the Israelis the need to loosen the chokehold on Palestinian movement. “I am saying (to the Israelis): Yes, I understand why you are concerned by security,” he said on the eve of the donor conference. “But in circumstances where Palestinians have demonstrated this security capability and built it, then you have to give them a chance to let it work.”

But Blair also had a message for the Palestinians. “Having a state is not just a question of territory,” he said. “It is about the nature of what happens inside that state…And the truth is that there will not be a (Palestinian) state unless the nature of the state is clear.”

Ultimately, though, that state will require a geographic home. For now, there are two Palestinian entities – one in the West Bank and one in Gaza – and there aren’t too many people at the moment who can tell you how they will be reunited.