Alwaght- Amid the escalation of the provocative Israeli actions in the West Bank that have turned it into a boiling pot, Palestinian groups gathered together in Egypt on Sunday to discuss ways to end the division and unite their ranks in the face of a common enemy.
In the meeting that was held in El-Alamein, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the secretary-generals of Palestinian groups including Hamas Political Burea head Ismail Haniyeh were present.
The meeting, which lasted for four hours, discussed repeated Israeli attacks, Palestine’s political developments, and also an agreement on a comprehensive national vision with ultimate goal of Palestinian unity.
After the meeting, Mahmoud Abbas read the final statement. According to the statement, the Palestinian groups called this meeting the initial step towards national dialogue. The participants asked all Palestinian groups to form a committee to complete the dialogue on various issues and cases, with the aim of ending the existing division and realizing national unity. Abbas maintained that this committee should start work immediately. He also expressed hope that the chiefs of Palestinian groups will have another meeting soon to "announce to our nation the end of division and the realization of Palestinian national unity.”
“Eastern Al-Quds Palestinians should also participate in the elections without any restrictions. The one who prevents the election is Israel. We again ask the international community to oblige Israel to allow Palestinian elections to be held in Al-Quds. Al-Quds calls us to counter the challenges that our nation is facing there. This is a historical responsibility and we must support the rights, sanctities and ideals of the Palestinian nation,” Abbas was quoted as saying as he called for presidential and parliamentary election.
Izat al-Rasheq, a member of Hamas Political Bureau, said their main priority and main goal is to adopt an approach and a comprehensive national strategy and unify the efforts to counter the Israeli regime and its crimes and defend the nation and its sanctities including Al-Quds and they holy Al-Aqsa Mosque and push against settlement construction.
“We are after strengthening resistance with all means, including armed resistance, and uniting the Palestinian factions and oppose security cooperation with the Israeli enemy and political arrests,” he said.
The meeting of the leaders of Palestinian groups was held in Cairo while some Palestinian groups, including Islamic Jihad, boycotted it in response to the continued arrest of members of these groups in the West Bank by the PA.
Islamic Jihad stated that with each new national meeting, another opportunity is created for the Palestinian people to think about restoring unity in the Palestinian political map, but if the outcomes of the Egypt meeting is political arrests, the outcomes cannot be satisfactory to the nation.
Resistance factions against compromises to Israel
Whereas the Palestinian leaders tried to pretend that they are united, their previous experience can lead to the notion that Egypt meeting yields no fruits. In October 2022, Mahmoud Abbas and the leaders of the resistance groups gathered for the first time in Algeria to end the division and create a consensus against the occupying enemy, and some experts evaluated it as an important stage in the Palestinian developments that can force back the Israeli occupation process, but the commitments of the PA and Abbas remained behind the negotiating table and were limited to taking collective photos, and after returning to the West Bank, he continued his regular policies against the resistance factions.
Over the past seven months that hardliners assumed the power in Tel Aviv and desecrated the Al-Aqsa Mosque multiple times, Abbas has not taken a strong stance against them and even recently signed a security deal with the enemy, completing the Israeli occupation’s security puzzle in the West Bank.
The fact that Hamas leaders attended the meeting despite Abbas’s disloyalty to his obligations was driven by an aim not to show Tel Aviv a weakness. After all, inter-Palestinian division helps Israelis fish in troubled waters and advance their plans. In other words, Hamas presence was for showing a good will to the PA that the movement takes genuine steps towards Palestinian interests rather than making compromises to the Israelis.
Difficult mission of saving PA
Abbas identifies himself as the legal representative of the Palestinian nation and tries to arrange meetings to improve his image and gain some legitimacy. He knows very well that his acceptance rate shrunk in recent years compared to the past two decades among the West Bankers and so he wants to pretend that he is the representative and everything he does is for providing their interests. But his measures are too late to get public support.
In recent years, Abbas has shown that he has served Israeli and American interests more than taking steps serving the liberation ideal, and Egypt meeting was held because a new mission was assigned to him by Washington and Tel Aviv, so that he can fulfill it well. Given the wide security and political gaps in the occupied territories following hardline cabinet's controversial judiciary reform plans, the US and Israeli regime are worried that in such a situation if a new conflict between the Palestinian resistance groups and the Tel Aviv erupts, the Israeli circumstances will worsen. Therefore, using their lackey, they are trying to block any military operations by the resistance forces against the occupied territories.
Abbas has always struggled to block Hamas and Islamic Jihad’s power gain in the West Bank and, so, arrested tens of their members and handed them over to Tel Aviv. Under secret agreements, PA forces were deployed to Jenin, a flash point over the past months, to enforce Israeli plans whose main aim is to detain the resistance fighters and check anti-Israeli operations.
The PA security cooperation with the Israelis represents the most important obstacle to the operations of the resistance groups in the West Bank, and they have repeatedly asked Abbas to end these services to Tel Aviv and leave the hands of the Palestinian fighters in the West Bank free to carry out armed operations against the occupiers. But the PA continues to acts as an arm of the enemy in the West Bank, and the concerns of Netanyahu and other Israeli officials about the weakness of Abbas and his apparatus and pushing to empower them confirms that no one can execute Israeli plans against the Palestinians as much as Abbas does.
In addition to rating Hamas and Islamic Jihad’s power gain a threat to his shaky position, Abbas finds their arms an existential threat to the Israeli regime and does not want the resistance to aim its arms at the Israelis.
Abbas advocated elections in Egypt while in 2019, everything was ready for presidential and parliamentary elections and he canceled them just two weeks before their due date. At the time, the reason was cited to be Israeli warnings that told Abbas that at the present circumstances, Hamas representatives will take all the West Bank seats if elections are held and this would undermine the PA position. Therefore, if a new elections is scheduled, Abbas and his Israeli masters will against obstruct them and his remarks are just aimed at deceiving the public.
Abbas and his friends believe that they cannot secure the interests of the Palestinians and form a Palestinian government through armed struggle, and they consider compromises to the occupiers as the only solution. This is while three decades have passed since the Oslo Accords, in which the Israeli regime was supposed to provide the conditions for the formation of a Palestinian state, were signed, but the Israelis have not fulfilled their promises. Netanyahu recently said that a Palestinian state will never come to existence, and therefore, Abbas is beating the air thinking that he can realize his goal through talks with and compromises to the Israelis.
On the other side, resistance groups and the residents of the West Bank have separated their ways from the PA and consider armed struggle as the only option capable of liberating the occupied territories, and the wars between Gaza and Tel Aviv in recent years have proven that the occupiers only understand the language of force and making deals with it is of no avail.
Now the Palestinians do not recognize the PA as their representative on the international stage and any compromises Abbas makes to the Israelis is invalid to them and they will not commit to it. Abbas’ cooperation with the Israelis in the Palestinian public’s viewpoint is an unforgivable betrayal of the Palestinian cause and this servility comes at a time Tel Aviv broadens scope of its crimes against the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza day by day. As a conclusion, the more Abbas plays in the Israeli puzzle, the more public anger and antipathy to him and the PA grows.
