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Abbas asks hamas to form new government { January 27 2006 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/27/AR2006012700677.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/27/AR2006012700677.html
Abbas to Ask Hamas to Form New Government
Israel Rules Out Peace Talks With Palestinian Administration
By Scott Wilson and William Branigin
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 27, 2006; 12:30 PM
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Jan. 27 -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Friday he would ask Hamas to form a new government after the radical Islamic movement won a large majority in the Palestinian parliament and his own long-dominant Fatah party declined to participate in a new cabinet.
Israel, meanwhile, ruled out peace talks with a Hamas-led government, saying it could not negotiate with an administration that included an armed group dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state.
Abbas told reporters outside his office, "We are carrying on contacts with all factions, and of course we will ask the party that won the majority to form the government," the Associated Press reported. He specified that "until now, we haven't asked anyone to form the government."
With political shockwaves still reverberating from Hamas's decisive victory in Wednesday's elections, supporters of Fatah and Hamas clashed in Gaza City Friday. More than 1,500 Fatah members demonstrated outside the Palestinian Legislative Council in Gaza City, waving banners and burning several vehicles as they denounced the election results.
Abbas's statement that Hamas would form the new government came after the group trounced Fatah in the elections, winning 76 of the 132 seats in the Palestinian legislature. Official results of the elections were announced Thursday. As it became clear that Hamas would score a resounding victory, Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, another Fatah leader, resigned his post along with other members of his cabinet.
Israeli officials reacted angrily to the results, which they said damaged the prospects for Middle East peace. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told reporters that Israel had opened a window of opportunity by withdrawing settlements from the Gaza Strip last summer but that "the Palestinians slammed it shut" by electing Hamas.
Livni said she urged several foreign ministers to help send a message that "elections are not a whitewash for terror." She said she told them that "Hamas cannot be a partner of Israel" and that the Palestinian Authority, if led by the group, "also cannot be a partner."
Acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared earlier that Israel "will not negotiate with a Palestinian administration if even part of it is an armed terrorist organization calling for the destruction of the state of Israel."
Leaders of Fatah, the movement of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, decided late Thursday not to join Hamas in forming a new government.
Fatah, which has dominated the legislature since the previous elections a decade ago and the Palestinian cause for far longer, won 43 seats in Wednesday's elections. A collection of nationalist, leftist and independent parties claimed the rest.
Acknowledging that Hamas had earned the right to form the next cabinet, Qureia, a member of Fatah's discredited old guard who did not run for reelection, told reporters Thursday, "This is the choice of the people. It should be respected."
Abbas, on the other hand, will continue to serve the four-year presidential term he won in an election a year ago, shortly after the death of Arafat, the founder of Fatah. Abbas will maintain the broad power to create national policy and control the security services, though he needs parliamentary approval for his budget and legislative proposals. He will also shape peace policy with Israel as head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which does not include Hamas.
The arrival of Hamas, formally known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, in the Palestinian Authority as a nearly equal partner will severely complicate Abbas's efforts to begin negotiations with Israel under the U.S.-backed peace plan known as the "road map." Hamas, which emerged in 1987 during the first Palestinian uprising as an offshoot of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, favors the creation of a Palestinian nation on land that now includes Israel rather than the road map's two-state solution.
The election results stunned U.S. and Israeli officials, who have repeatedly stated that they would not work with a Palestinian Authority that included Hamas, which both countries and the European Union have designated as a terrorist organization. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday a party could not "have one foot in politics and the other in terror. Our position on Hamas has therefore not changed."
Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, said in a statement that the Palestinian people had "voted democratically and peacefully." But, he added, "these results may confront us with an entirely new situation which will need to be analyzed" at a meeting of European foreign ministers next week.
Jubilant Hamas leaders reiterated Thursday that they had no plans to pursue peace talks or disarm the party's armed wing, a condition Israel has set for beginning negotiations under the road map. The plan, which calls for the creation of an independent Palestinian state by the end of 2005, has been frozen during recent years of violence.
In Ramallah, a Fatah stronghold where Hamas won every parliamentary seat except the one reserved for a Christian, dozens of activists from both parties clashed Thursday in front of the Palestinian Legislative Council, as the parliament is formally known.
The dispute started when a Hamas supporter hung the party's emerald-green banner above the entrance in place of the national flag. Fatah activists arrived and tore down the banner, which bears the Islamic axiom, "There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his prophet." The fight that ensued was broken up by police officers, who fired warning shots into the air.
"What they did offended not only Hamas but the Islamic nation," said Saleh Mikdad, 40, a print shop employee from the Amari refugee camp here. "But now we are all brothers."
In the past, the Fatah-dominated parliament approved the initiatives of Abbas and Arafat without much debate. But that could change with Hamas controlling the legislature, which will have the power to bring down cabinets if it does not agree with policy and would likely have to approve the terms of a final peace agreement with Israel.
In proceeding with elections despite Hamas's strong showing in last year's municipal races, Abbas gambled that it would be easier to disarm the group and modulate its policies, which include adopting Islamic law in the territories, with its members inside the Palestinian Authority. But Hamas's showing was far stronger than predicted by anyone in Fatah -- or by Palestinian pollsters who severely underestimated the movement's performance in its first national elections.
Hamas leaders must now decide how to form a cabinet whose ministers will run a Palestinian Authority bureaucracy dominated by Fatah supporters. Several Fatah officials said that by declining to join the next cabinet, Fatah would give Hamas, its sharpest critic for years, a sense of the difficulties involved in governing an angry electorate living under military occupation.
"They want to see how Hamas will act once it's responsible for running the government," said Bassem Barhum, a spokesman for the Palestinian Legislative Council. "They want to show the public that this is what they got. This is Hamas."
Barhum said rules required Abbas, who has threatened to resign if Hamas blocks his political program, to invite the largest party in parliament to form the next cabinet. Although it has the votes in parliament to name any cabinet it chooses, Hamas could be hampered by its lack of experience if it chooses to govern without a partner.
Party leaders chose candidates with backgrounds in medicine, education, computer sciences and other fields so that Hamas would have the expertise to run the various ministries. But Mahmoud Zahar, a victorious Hamas candidate from Gaza, said before the vote that the party favored a coalition government if it won.
One possibility is that Hamas will choose the leader of a third party to be prime minister while its own members grow accustomed to their new roles. One likely candidate for the job is Salam Fayyad, a former finance minister who won a parliamentary seat as the head of the anti-corruption Third Way party.
"My hunch is that they do not want to form a government on their own and would prefer a coalition with Fatah," said Ali Jarbawi, a political science professor at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank. "If this is not possible, I think they'll support a government of technocrats."
Some angry Fatah activists called for Abbas, who is commonly known as Abu Mazen, to step down.
"Abu Mazen led us to this catastrophe," said Shukri Radaideh, a Fatah leader in the Bethlehem district. "He must now resign."
Abbas postponed these parliamentary elections last July to secure a new election law beneficial to Fatah's prospects. One of the law's chief provisions allowed more members of parliament to be elected from parties' national candidate lists rather than from the district level, where Hamas's organization is strongest.
The results announced Thursday, however, showed Hamas winning three more seats from the national list than Fatah and nearly three times as many in district races. In addition to its sweep in Ramallah, Hamas won all seats except those reserved for Christian candidates in such traditional Fatah territory as Bethlehem and Jerusalem, where the Israeli cabinet had prohibited Hamas candidates from campaigning.
Branigin reported from Washington.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
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