The Palestinian Authority has had a new government for 10 days now, but the prime minister, Rami Hamdallah, acknowledged on Thursday that he still lacked any authority in the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip and that nothing had yet changed on the ground.This entire article doesn't mention the PLO once.
Though the new government was approved by both of the rival Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, Mr. Hamdallah offered no plan for disarming militants, integrating the two sides’ security forces, or even getting Gaza’s 1.7 million residents to start paying taxes and electricity bills.
In an hourlong interview, Mr. Hamdallah laid much of the responsibility for reconciling the West Bank and Gaza after seven years of schism on two committees, one of which has yet to be formed. He repeated political platitudes about Palestinian unity, but offered no practical program to deliver it.
Asked when he would visit Gaza, Mr. Hamdallah was silent for a long moment and then said, “We haven’t set a time for that.”
“You have to be realistic — we’re not in control,” said Mr. Hamdallah, 55, a former university president. He noted that German reunification started a quarter-century ago, and that “up until now, they are still working on that, so don’t expect we’ll do it all in 24 hours.”
The new government has already weathered one crisis, a dispute over the payment of public-sector salaries in which the Hamas-affiliated police in Gaza shut the territory’s banks for a week and even confiscated credit-card readers from some supermarkets. But Mr. Hamdallah said it was public pressure in Gaza and the intervention of a monetary official that got the banks reopened, not him or his ministers.
There is no plan to avoid a similar clash next month. Mr. Hamdallah said that the Palestinian Authority would not pay the 40,000 employees of the former Hamas government in Gaza, and that it had not secured a commitment from Qatar or other countries to do so.
In Gaza, the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniya, stepped aside, but his picture still hangs in government offices. The streets are patrolled by Hamas forces. A rocket was fired Wednesday into Israeli territory. The Rafah border crossing into Egypt remains closed, and Mr. Hamdallah said negotiations with Egypt to reopen it had not begun.
“I wish I could open it yesterday,” he said, “but this is not in our hands.”
Mr. Hamdallah said his cabinet had appointed a five-member committee on Tuesday to tackle administrative, financial and legal issues surrounding integration. One task is to reverse a decree Mr. Abbas signed years ago exempting Gazans from taxes and other payments because Hamas had taken over there.
Security issues, including disarming Hamas’s military wing and other groups, will be left for a high commission that Mr. Abbas has yet to name, Mr. Hamdallah said.
Without understanding the relationship between the PLO and the PA, none of this makes sense.
The PA reports to the PLO. It is sort of like the interior ministry of the organization that is really responsible for all decisions out of the West Bank areas. Hamas remains in power in Gaza. The "unity government" is a joke - it is not a government in any sense of the word.
Just for fun, go to the "State of Palestine"'s Ministry of Justice website. It has exactly two articles, one from 2012 and one from 2011. Most subsections are blank. It's a charade. I can't remember the last time I read a story in the PalArab media about a trial. (A quick search in Ma'an since the beginning of the year for any stories with both the words "trial" and "judge" finds 21 results - all of which refer to events in Israel or Egypt.)
The Ministry of Social Affairs page has not updated with the name of its new minister. They have a "Ministry of State" site which mostly complains about Israel and doesn't even have a logo. The "Ministry of Foreign Affairs" site actually is updated, but, while everyone has heard of the PLO's spokesman Erekat, can anyone actually name the Foreign Affairs minister? It is only a ceremonial position because all foreign affairs are done by the PLO!
In the sense that the PA is technocratic and has no Hamas members, this is true. In the sense that it has no power over Gaza, that is true as well. But the larger picture is missing - the entire "government" is not a government in any sense of the word. The real government is Hamas and the Fatah-dominated PLO, and it will remain that way. They make all the decisions - sometimes together, usually apart.
The difference is that Abbas is representing it as a government for which Hamas and Fatah are jointly responsible. He wants all the benefits of "unity" without any of the responsibility. He wants to allow Hamas to do whatever it wants but to pretend to be an ally. He is trying to have it both ways. But the entire system is untenable, as Hamas will not give up real power in Gaza and will only act in self interest (perhaps allowing the PLO to man the Rafah crossing, for example.)
Unfortunately, the world is buying into the charade, and the NYT blew an opportunity to say the obvious - that the "government of Palestine," no matter how "technocratic," is a toothless construct that was chosen and run by a bunch of unelected terrorists and terror supporters, some from Hamas and some from Fatah.