Hamas in a New Unity Government?

• 06.29.2015, 21:04
•  Near East,  World

Talks on Palestinian unity government continue, but the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has already given Hamas deadline – June 30, for joining it, The Jerusalem Post informs. The preconditions that PLO puts towards any faction is that they should accept PLO’s program, which includes recognition of Israel and the support of two-state solution. This however, is not acceptable for Hamas and it has declared that it will never do that.

Today, on June 29, Hamas called an emergency meeting for discussing the question of forming a unity government. During the meeting it was once again declared that the PLO has no right to take the task of government formation, maannews.com reports. During the meeting, Senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouq declared that the new unity government should be a "non-political" entity.

"It is unacceptable that the government adopts the agenda of the PLO because that has never been mentioned in any of our national agreements," he said. By saying agreements, Abu Marzouq particularly meant the 2012 Cairo Agreement, which Hamas and Fatah signed for forming a unity government in which it is said that government "must not have any political agendas." Moreover, Abu Marzounq added that according to the Cairo Agreement, any Palestinian faction, including Hamas, has a right to form a unity government.

It should be mentioned that earlier Abbas, during a meeting with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, had already declared that a new government would only include politicians who complied with a number of prerequisites.

It is quite a complicated situation and taking into consideration the recent developments in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the relation of Hamas and PLO, Israel and Hamas, one cannot for sure predict what to expect from these talks. Other information that Hamas is negotiating with Israel on a five-year truce in the Gaza Strip, raise even more questions…