Hamas reaches agreement with Fatah
By
Jean Shaoul
16 October 2017
The Egyptian military junta, working secretly with Israel, has imposed a “reconciliation” agreement on Fatah and Hamas. The rival Palestinian factions control the West Bank and Gaza respectively.
By accepting the new arrangements, Hamas is signalling that it is ready to join Fatah in policing the Palestinians in collusion with Egypt and other Arab bourgeois regimes, provided that it is allowed to do so by Israel and its imperialist sponsors and allies.
The Islamists have been brought to the negotiating table in large measure by Israel’s economic blockade, imposed on Gaza more than 10 years ago to cripple the Hamas-led regime. With little electricity or water due to power cuts, people are forced to buy water at exorbitant prices. Conditions are wretched: nearly 50 percent are unemployed, more than 65 percent of Gazans live in poverty, 72 percent are food-insecure, and 80 percent are dependent on international aid.
The proposed settlement is part of a broader effort by Egypt to strengthen the Sunni Arab axis, which includes Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and neutralise Qatar, Turkey and Iran. It follows several previous attempts by Egypt to broker a national unity government, the last in 2014, which Israel scuppered by launching a war on Hamas.
Azzam Al-Ahmed, head of the Fatah delegation, and Saleh Alarury, representing Hamas, signed the agreement while praising Egypt’s role and welcoming the prospect of an end to the bitter divisions between the two factions. Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas said that the deal constituted “a declaration of the end to division and a return to national Palestinian unity.”
The agreement follows a series of failed moves by Hamas to…