Palestinian Unity Is a First Step, but Israel and the U.S. Stand in the Way

By giving Palestinians greater strength when dealing with Israel, a Fatah-Hamas unity government is a necessary first step toward a viable solution. But continuing obstacles make it insufficient toward achieving that goal.

Since Hamas’s electoral victory in 2006, Fatah has spent tremendous financial and diplomatic resources to defeat Hamas at the expense of combating Israel’s apartheid regime and military occupation. While Hamas has similarly targeted Fatah members and suppressed their protests in the Gaza Strip, the magnitude of its attacks has paled in comparison to its rival's.

Fatah’s control of the Palestinian Authority and its maintenance of diplomatic relations have enabled it to make decisions on behalf of the Palestinian people among other states and multilateral bodies. It has used its relative power to considerably weaken Hamas’s legitimacy and position. Palestinians have suffered the most as a result of this internecine conflict.

Previous reconciliation efforts have been swiftly dashed by external intervention – most notably by the United States and Israel.

This round may be different because both Palestinian factions are enduring political vulnerabilities. The clamp down on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has weakened Hamas, while the failure of the latest round of peace talks has incapacitated Fatah, which placed all its eggs in this broken basket. Fatah also recently acceded to 15 international agreements despite U.S. opposition indicating its protest to the failed negotiations.

Still, it is unlikely that the unity agreement signals a new page in the course of Palestinian national history because the West Bank economy, with a bloated public sector and high rates of debt, is reliant on donor aid for survival; donor aid over which the United States exercises considerable influence. A successful unity government must be ready to find new sources of funding if necessary and new diplomatic alliances able to fill the role the United States has historically filled and monopolized. Such radical shifts may be unlikely but they are not impossible.

In the meantime, the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement to overcome government intransigence remains as relevant and as necessary as ever. It will grow as a younger generation of civil society activists step in where the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and governments around the world have failed. There is no alternative to national reconciliation, however, as the global movement can only shape but not supplant the political process.

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