In the early days of Hamas’s coup against the legitimate Palestinian authorities, the late King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz watched a clip of Palestinian youths clashing with the Islamist movement in Gaza.
The clip was an omen of the dangerous turn that the intra-Palestinian conflict had been taking: of the civil war that would begin in Gaza and expand to the rest of Palestine, flooding it with weapons and armed men.
The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques invited the leadership of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas to meet for talks in the Kingdom, insisting that the dialogue under his auspices be held beside the Kaaba to ensure a spiritual atmosphere. They prayed together and circumambulated the Kaaba hand in hand in a scene that was intended to show that brothers fighting one another was unthinkable.
In addition to arranging this spiritual setting, the King also called in a political team of advisers to help him end the rift between the “bronemies” and draft a written agreement between the two sides. Both parties were to commit to it, and the international community would accept it, as it underscored the fact that the peace process could move forward only if Hamas accepted the agreements and arrangements that the PLO had agreed to.
These talks in Makkah were held behind closed doors. However, Saudi diplomats kept the Americans and Europeans in the loop to deny Israel the pretext it had long used to obstruct the peace process, which was supposed to culminate in the establishment of a Palestinian state within five years.
The split prevented the internationally recognized legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people from exercising their authority over part of the homeland, offering Israel a strong pretext to claim that the PLO no longer fully represented Palestinian people.
Israeli officials kept repeating the same question: who are we expected to negotiate and engage with?
Saudi mediation managed to secure an agreement between the two sides, ending the split. A unity government headed by Hamas, the leading party in the Legislative Council, was to be approved by the President of the Palestinian Authority. In other words, the presidency would remain with Fatah, while the premiership would go to Hamas, with ministries divided accordingly.
The agreement, which averted a civil war at the time, remained incomplete because it did not include explicit provisions affirming Hamas’s commitment to the agreements that had been signed by the PLO. Accordingly, there was no Palestinian political consensus and the requisites for international recognition were not met, leaving the sponsors of the peace process, which had already been stalled, wary of the joint government. And when Hamas took charge of the Ministry of Finance, the most critical portfolio in the Palestinian administration, President Abbas struggled to secure funds from the donor states that recognized him but were reluctant to hand aid over to a finance minister affiliated with Hamas.
Before the Makkah talks ended, around-the-clock efforts were made to replace “one word for another” in the document announcing the end of the division and the formation of a unity government that included Fatah and Hamas. The magic word that Palestinian unity hinged on was “commit,” Hamas agreed to “respect.”
The joint government was formed under the late Ismail Haniyeh, but the recognition never came. The situation did not change: Abbas remained recognized, and Hamas remained rejected.
Hamas had assumed that heading the government and a parliamentary majority would ensure international recognition. What actually happened, however, was that the word “respect” was never seen as an acceptable substitute for “commit.”
With matters left unchanged following the Makkah talks and the formation of the unity government, Hamas turned its back on the agreement. From that day forward, Palestinian politics has been in a dark tunnel. The painful repercussions continue to hurt Palestinians to this very day. The Palestinian people will continue in this tunnel so long as the “commit/respect” binary is not overcome.
