RIYADH, Dec 29: A tripartite meeting including Palestinian Prime Minister Ismayel Hanieyh, President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordanian King Abdullah is increasingly on cards, signifying a major change in status quo, Israel’s influential daily Haaretz said on Friday. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt are believed to be behind the move, the paper added.
The Arab governments are concerned that calling new elections, as Abbas has demanded, might yield unwelcome, even dangerous, results. Also contributing to this initiative is the pressure of what is generally termed as ‘Arab streets’ on the Arab governments to continue providing aid to the Palestinians. Most of the Arab governments, referred to as pro western, have stopped footing the Palestinian bill for some time now, under mounting Western pressure and also to force Hamas to recognise Israel as demanded by the West.
Some of the Arab governments are also now starting to concede that the current embargo on Hamas will not bring about the collapse of the government it heads in the Palestinian Authority.
The ‘moderate’ Arab states are aspiring to establish a Palestinian unity government that will be able to function on two levels: to commit to a stable cease-fire, and also to operate PA institutions.
Harretz reports that Saudi Arabia was likely to present Haniyeh with a softer version of the Arab League’s Beirut resolution of 2002 that could tempt Hamas to accept this declaration. Jordanian sources say that this proposal will include elements such as an Israeli withdrawal to “temporary lines” and a Palestinian cease-fire for five years, during which, or at the end of which, the two sides will carry out negotiations. In parallel, economic cooperation between Israel and Palestine would resume.
These points are expected to be at the crux of discussions between Ehud Olmert and Hosni Mubarak during their meeting next Thursday.
The proposed tripartite meeting also signals thawing of relations between Jordan and Hamas. Jordan froze relations with Hamas in 1999 when Jordan expelled the organisation’s officials and closed its offices. The embargo was reinforced earlier this year, when Jordan blamed Hamas for weapons and explosives smuggling into Jordan.
Interestingly the Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh reached Jeddah on Thursday, for the first time after taking over as the leader of the Hamas led government. Although he went to Saudi Arabia to perform Haj but the visit also provided him an opportunity to meet the Saudi leadership. However, Saudi Arabia has reportedly been reluctant so far to receive Haniyeh on an official trip to Saudi Arabia.
In the meantime, some reports indicate the indirect contact between Hamas leadership and Israel. Nawaf Hawatmeh, General Secretary of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine told an Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera that Hamas’ officials met Israeli officials in London and prepared “Geneva Hamas document”.
Hawatmeh said Ismail Haniya, the Palestinian prime minister, had given the document to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president.
The DFLP is a Damascus-based Palestinian group which advocates a tough line in confronting the Israeli occupation.
However, Hawatmeh’s claim was challenged by Osama Hamdan, the Hamas representative in Lebanon. In an interview on Thursday, he denied that any meeting between Hamas and Israeli officials had taken place in London.
