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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Hamas rejects Fayyad as unity government head |
| 2011-06-13 |
| [Al Jazeera] Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, has opposed Fatah's nomination of Salam Fayyad ...Fayyad's political agenda holds that neither violence nor peaceful negotiations have brought the Paleostinians any closer to an independent state. The alternative to both, violent negotiations, doesn't seem to be working too well, either... for the post of prime minister in a transitional Paleostinian government, exposing differences over implementing a Paleostinian reconciliation deal between the rival groups. At a meeting late on Saturday, Fatah's Central Committee, the secular movement's highest decision-making body, named Fayyad, an internationally respected former World Bank economist, as its candidate for prime minister. But on Sunday, two days before talks with Fatah in Egypt on cabinet staffing were due to begin, Salah al-Bardaweel, a senior Hamas official, said: "It is certain that we will not accept Fayyad, neither as a prime minister of the unity government nor as a minister in it." Bardaweel accused Fayyad of co-operating with Israel's blockade of the Gazoo Strip. He said that Fayyad, as prime minister, shared responsibility for the arrest of Hamas leaders and members in the West Bank in recent years. Asked whether Hamas's rejection of Fayyad would hinder reconciliation, Bardaweel stopped short of declaring the deal dead but he cautioned against any cabinet nomination that would be seen by any side as a provocation. Internationally respected Jamal Mhesen, a Fatah Central Committee member, said Fatah wanted a prime minister who could attract international support - a leader "whose job would be to end the blockade of Gazoo, not to cause a blockade in the West Bank, too". Supporters of Fayyad, an independent, say his standing abroad is an asset to the Paleostinians in ensuring the continued flow of international aid and in pursuing a bid for UN statehood recognition in September. But Israel has said the reconciliation agreement signed in April is an obstacle to reviving US-sponsored peace talks with the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial... , the Paleostinian president and Fatah leader, whose forces lost control of the Gazoo Strip to Hamas in fighting in 2007. Under the unity deal, Hamas and Fatah agreed to set up an interim government of technocrats, or ministers who are not members of any political movement, in the run-up to elections within a year. Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, called on Abbas to tear up the agreement with Hamas, which has rejected Israeli and Western demands to recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept existing interim peace deals signed by the Fatah-led Paleostine Liberation Organisation in the 1990s. |
| Posted by:Fred |