Middle East: Moderate Seeks a Voice

"We are still very, very far away from a return to real negotiations," Abu Zayda told IPS. "There is nothing new in what Olmert said. It is much too early to talk even about preparing the grounds for new talks."

A former minister of prisoner affairs in the Palestinian government, Abu Zayda is also a senior member of the Fatah party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. A moderate who has appeared regularly on Israeli TV networks to explain the Palestinian position -- in fluent Hebrew -- Abu Zayda believes in a negotiated two-state solution with an independent Palestine living alongside Israel.

His political opponents are Hamas, the Islamic movement that ousted his party in parliamentary elections in January this year and which refuses to recognise Israel.

As much as he would like to see Palestinians and Israelis again engaging around the negotiating table, rather than through the barrel of a gun, the most he will say about Olmert's speech, in which the Israeli Prime Minister said he was ready to evacuate lots of land and many Jewish settlements, is that it might bring about an atmospheric change. "It is preferable to talk about peace and for there not to be peace, than to talk about war and for there to be war," he says.

Abu Zayda spoke to IPS just days after Israeli and Palestinian leaders agreed to a ceasefire whereby Palestinian militant groups have pledged to stop firing rockets into Israel, and Olmert has agreed to halt all military operations in the Gaza Strip.

{josquote}The truce, which is more or less holding, comes after five months of bloodletting in which over 400 Palestinians, many of them Hamas militants, were killed in Israeli raids aimed at stopping the rocket fire and winning the release of an Israeli soldier being held captive in the coastal strip by Hamas militants. Two Israelis were killed by rockets in the southern town of Sderot in November{/josquote}.

In Gaza, says Abu Zayda, there is a "dispute" over the rockets, which he says the Palestinians ironically refer to as "flying stones" because of their rudimentary, makeshift nature, especially when compared with the sophisticated weapons systems at Israel's disposal. While Hamas militants have been firing most of the rockets, he says that the Islamic movement "knows that it has to stop. It harms the Palestinians by inviting Israeli attacks. There have been many losses, people injured, homes destroyed."

For now, he says, the goal should be to stabilise the ceasefire. The next step should be a "prisoner exchange" with Palestinian militants releasing Cpl. Gilad Shalit, the soldier they snatched from a base inside Israel in late June and have been holding captive ever since, and Israel releasing Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. If Israel opens border crossings and roadblocks, which seriously impede Palestinian travel, the truce will become more durable, he adds. "It is possible to reach a total cessation of violence."

What does Abu Zayda make of the assertion by senior Israeli defence officials that Hamas has agreed to a ceasefire to win time to recuperate and rearm after being battered for five months by the Israeli military? "There are those who see this working in Hamas' favour, but there are those, like myself, who see this as part of a process of preparing Hamas for recognition of Israel and for negotiations. Part of a process of them moving into the atmosphere of a political process. Of Hamas moving from being an armed group to a political body."

In his major policy speech earlier this week, Olmert also said that if the Palestinian government accepted the demands of the international community to renounce violence, recognise Israel and adhere to interim peace agreements, and gave up on the right of return for Palestinian refugees, then his government was ready to agree to "an independent Palestinian state, with territorial contiguity" in the West Bank -- "a state with full sovereignty and defined borders."

Abu Zayda is skeptical about the Israeli leader's call for renewed dialogue. "For now, I don't see any change in direction. You can't build a serious peace plan based on Olmert's speech. I want to sit around the negotiating table on the basis of 'two states for two peoples' and on the basis of the 1967 borders," he says, referring to the line that divided Israel and the West Bank on the eve of the 1967 war during which the area was captured by Israel.

For that to happen, the ceasefire must first endure. But with Abbas announcing Thursday that talks with Hamas over the formation of a national unity government had hit a "dead end," the truce could be in jeopardy. The Palestinian leader had hoped that by cobbling together a unity government he would be able to persuade western leaders to lift punishing economic sanctions they imposed on the Palestinian Authority after Hamas came to power.

But Abu Zayda says that disagreement between Abbas and Hamas over who will hold two key portfolios -- the finance ministry and the interior ministry, which is in charge of the Palestinian security forces -- means that formation of a unity government is becoming "less and less likely."

In the absence of a Palestinian unity government, a key element in sustaining the ceasefire, sanctions will not be lifted, the likelihood of renewing negotiations that have been on ice for six years will become increasingly remote, and violence could again erupt. With tensions between Fatah and Hamas running high, that violence could be internal as well, as was the case a few months ago when at least 10 people were killed when militants from these two groups waged gun battles in the streets.

Abu Zayda refuses to be drawn on what will transpire if unity talks fail altogether. "You want me to predict what will happen in a few months," he chuckles, "when I don't even know what is going to happen tomorrow." (END/IPS/MM/PI/IP/PH/SS/06)

Source: IPS - Inter Press Service News Agency

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