Palestinian leaders go to Mecca for last-ditch talks
Saudi Arabia brought the two main Palestinian leaders to Mecca, Islam’s holiest city, today for a last-ditch attempt to end their bloody conflict and complete a power-sharing agreement on a coalition government.
King Abdullah, Crown Prince Sultan and Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal had flown to Jiddah, less than an hour’s drive from Mecca, to welcome the Palestinians who were expected to arrive this evening.
The presence of the king and princes showed the kingdom’s determination to repair the rift between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, who will lead the talks.
Four days of gunbattles between Hamas and Abbas’s Fatah party killed more than 30 people and wounded over 200 others until a ceasefire took hold on Sunday evening.
Even as Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh left the Gaza Strip for the talks today, Hamas and Fatah security officials fired at each other for 10 minutes at the Gaza-Egypt crossing terminal. No injuries were reported.
Haniyeh, who was in the VIP hall at the time, told reporters that his Hamas delegation was determined to reach agreement.
“Nobody wants the battling to continue,” he said after crossing into Egypt. “The only beneficiary is Israel.”
Before Abbas left for the talks, he warned that failure in Mecca would give a green light to civil war, the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported.
“Failure would mean the deterioration of the internal situation and igniting civil war,” the paper quoted him as saying. “The word ’failure’ is forbidden.”
The Saudis are pointedly convening the talks in a guest palace overlooking the Kaaba, the black-draped cubic shrine toward which all Muslims turn when they pray.
King Abdullah made clear he hoped the setting would have an influence when he issued a statement to the Palestinian community in Saudi Arabia today.
“I hope that the Palestinian brothers hear your demand, and that they will not leave the sacred land without a commitment before God to stop fighting and bloodshed,” the king said.
State-guided Saudi newspapers urged the Palestinians to reconcile and observe the truce that took hold Sunday.
“The ball now is in the Palestinian court,” wrote commentator Hani Wafa in a column titled The Last Chance in Al-Riyadh newspaper.
“The Palestinian leaders alone can make wisdom and the Palestinians’ general welfare prevail over the desire to control and impose one’s words by the use of force.”
“If the Palestinians cannot reach radical solutions at the Mecca meeting, then I believe we have to wait 50 more years for them to, perhaps, get over the (power) complex,” he added.
Hours before the talks, Kadoura Fares, a former Fatah Cabinet minister who met Mashaal last week, told Israel’s Army Radio that Fatah and Hamas had overcome almost all the obstacles to forming a coalition government during their talks in recent weeks.
Hamas has approached Fatah’s position to the point where the Islamic party will now respect the peace agreements that Fatah signed with Israel as the main faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, Fares said.
“Hamas is willing to sign an agreement ... that the (new) government respect all the agreements that the PLO signed with Israel,” Fares told Army Radio.
But the recent fighting has deepened resentment between the two sides and can only make it more difficult to compromise. In recent months, Egypt, Syria and Qatar have all tried and failed to end the bloody power struggle.
The sides have been deadlocked since Hamas won the Palestinian elections in January 2006 and took control of the Cabinet and legislature. The West promptly imposed a financial blockade on the Palestinian government because of Hamas’ refusal to renounce violence and recognise Israel and previous agreements signed between the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Israel.
Abbas, a moderate who was elected separately in 2005, started negotiating with Hamas last fall in the hope that a coalition government would enable the West to lift the boycott and allow the return of aid money.
By then, thousands of Palestinians had gone unpaid for months.
The talks broke down repeatedly, and street battles between gunmen of the two parties erupted with increasing frequency in Gaza. The differences focused on the program of the proposed coalition and who would control the security forces.
Ostensibly, the gaps are small – in the case of the program only a single word. Abbas has insisted Hamas promise to “commit” to previous PLO agreements, including interim peace deals with Israel. Hamas is only willing to say it “respects” such agreements.
The underlying problem appears to be a deep mistrust and unwillingness to share power.
