PLO okays plan for referendum despite Hamas opposition
RAMALLAH, June 6: Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas was headed for a showdown with the Hamas government after winning the green light on Tuesday to hold a referendum on implicitly recognising Israel.
The decision by the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) to endorse his referendum plan came despite fierce opposition from Hamas, which argued that more time was needed for talks to resolve deep differences with Mr Abbas’s own Fatah faction.
Azzam al-Ahmed, an aide of the Palestinian leader who has played a key role in cross-party crisis talks over the last 10 days, said Mr Abbas would announce the date of the referendum in a decree on Thursday.
Spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said a date for the referendum would be declared within 48 hours — still leaving open the possibility of a last-minute compromise. Polling would take place 40 days after the announcement, he added.
However, there was little expectation that Hamas is about to change its tune, although a new poll showed the vast majority of Palestinians both back Mr Abbas’s call for a referendum and intend to vote in favour of a document first drawn up by a cross-party group of senior militants held in Israeli prisons.
Prime Minister Ismail Haniya said a further round of talks would be ‘the only way to resolve our differences’.
“We cannot accept that the dialogue has failed. We cannot decide this after just one or two additional meetings as there are many strategic questions to be addressed,” he said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting in Gaza City.
Government spokesman Ghazi Hamad said ‘the language of threats’ would not solve the impasse.
“Dialogue is the best way to reach a compromise. Threats only aggravate the crisis. We must give dialogue another chance,” he told a news conference.
The document at the centre of the referendum calls for a national unity government, an end to attacks in Israel and the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel on land conquered by the Jewish state in 1967.
Such a blueprint would undercut Hamas’s long-time platform of refusing to recognise Israel or disavow the use of violence even within the Jewish state’s borders, as well as bounce it into a coalition government with Mr Abbas’s Fatah faction, which it trounced in a January parliamentary election.
In a bid to end growing financial and security crises, Mr Abbas had served Hamas last month with a 10-day deadline, which expired at midnight. He said there must be a deal on solving the crisis and accepting the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, or that he would put the statehood initiative to a referendum.
Washington welcomed his bold move to resolve the issue once and for all.
“Abbas has demonstrated that he’s somebody who wants to work toward a two-state solution,” said White House spokesman Tony Snow.
“I think it’s important for Palestinians to wrestle with the issue of whether they want to have a two-state solution.”
The Hamas government’s hardline stance has led it to be boycotted and starved of aid from the European Union as well as the United States, bringing the Palestinian Authority to the brink of financial meltdown.
A power struggle between the Fatah-controlled security services and Hamas has also degenerated into deadly clashes in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas’s reticence about a referendum stems in part from the polls, which show voters are likely to give the prisoners’ plan overwhelming backing.
A survey released by the West Bank’s Bir Zeit university found that 77 per cent of Palestinians intend to vote in favour of the blueprint and that electoral support for Hamas had declined by 13 per cent.
Former parliament speaker and PLO executive committee member Rawhi Fattuh said there would be no need for a referendum should Hamas accept the blueprint at any stage before polling day.
“The referendum is not itself a goal,” Mr Fattuh said. “It’s a way to break the isolation imposed on the Palestinian people.”
The prospect of a deal had long looked bleak amid vicious Fatah-Hamas rivalry, which has left 16 people dead since early May.
In the latest outbreak, six Palestinians were wounded when the Gaza City headquarters of the Fatah-dominated preventive security service came under mortar attack in broad daylight. —AFP
