'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Palestinian unity government formed

Congratulations to the negotiators of Fateh and Hamas who have been able to reach agreement on a governmental list that will be presented to the Legislative Council for a (now merely formal) vote of approval on Saturday.

In the ultra-sensitive post of Interior Minister will be Hani al-Kawasmi. The head of Fateh's parliamentary bloc, Azzam Ahmed, will be vice-premier to Ismail Haniyeh's premier. My old buddy Ziad Abu Amr will (as previously agreed) be the Foreign Minister; Salam Fayad will be at Finance. Mustafa Barghouti will be information minister, etc etc...

There are some great choices here.

The Hamas website in Arabic tells us that French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy has sent an official message to Abu Amr congratulating him on the formation of the national unity Government and expressing the hope that the two could hold a meeting soon (no date given), in either Paris or the OPTs.

(The text of the 'appointment letter', agreed in Mecca February 9, by which PA Pres Mahmoud Abbas formally invited Haniyeh to form this new unity government, and which sets out the politica parameters for the government, is here.)

I want to recall that almost exactly 12 months ago, when I was in Palestine, the Israelis (and Americans) issued threats "of the most serious nature imaginable" against Ziad Abu Amr, in the event he would agree to join a Hamas-led government; and the threats worked.

This time around, the US has far less coercive power in the region, in general, and Hamas and the Palestinian people have proven that they can't be broken by the quite inhumane siege that Israel and the US (and also, I note the US-backed governments of Egypt and Jordan, and also nearly all the rest of the international community) maintained around the OPTs. So things are noticeably different.

In Israel, however, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said his government would continue to boycott the PA government and encourage other countries to do the same because its program falls short of the conditions that the US-dominated "Quartet" set for its acceptance:

"Unfortunately the new Palestinian government seems to have said no to the three benchmarks of the international community," Regev said. "Accordingly, Israel will not deal with this new government and we hope the international community will stand firmly by its own principles and refuse to deal with a government that says no to peace and no to reconciliation."

One thing that always strongly puzzled me about the "Quartet" was why on earth the United Nations-- which is supposed to be the organization that upholds fairness and the over-arching rule of law at the global level, ever allowed itself to be drawn into acting as the subordinate of the Bush administration in the Bushites' very one-sided pursuit of a pro-Israeli agenda.

Maybe now, finally, enough European and other powers will be distancing themselves from the one-sided approach of the Bushites that the UN can start playing a much more constructive role in Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy?

In fact, maybe it's time-- coming up as we are for 40 years into Israel's very damaging pursuit of its settlement projects in the OPTs and in Syria's Golan region-- for the U.N. Secretary-General to convene an authoritative international conference to resolve finally, once and all, all the still-unresolved tracks of the Arab-Israeli conflict, on the basis of international law and the UNSC's many well-known resolutions.

Why would any sane person want to stand in the way of that?