The Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, returned to Gaza yesterday to begin selecting a list of ministers for a new coalition cabinet in the wake of a rare unity agreement between the rival Hamas and Fatah factions. Khaled Meshal, the exiled leader of Hamas's ruling political bureau, writing in the Guardian today, said the agreement reached in Mecca last week offered a new opportunity for a "power-sharing process" and called on the international community to lift its financial boycott of the Palestinian authority. Under the agreement, Mr Haniyeh, himself a Hamas leader, will remain prime minister but will lead a cabinet of independents as well as figures from Hamas and Fatah. | In Mecca, Hamas also agreed to "respect" previous peace negotiations signed by the Palestinians with Israel but stopped short of recognising Israel. |
Several important decisions remain unresolved. No one has yet been chosen to be interior minister, a powerful position with control over the Palestinian security forces. Western governments have said they are still studying the agreement. On Sunday, Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, told his cabinet: "At this stage, Israel neither rejects nor accepts the agreement."
In his article today, Mr Meshal continues a series of incremental steps made by Hamas in recent months to what appears to be a more moderate position in which it calls for a Palestinian state within the occupied territories.
In a key phrase he talks of the "acknowledgement of the right of the refugees to return to their homes".The word "acknowledgement" leaves open the possibility - envisaged in the Camp David and Taba talks in late 2000 and early 2001 - that the bulk of any returning refugees would go only to the territory of the Palestinian state, not of pre-1967 Israel.