'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Israel-Hamas deal closer; New role for Abu Mazen

Hamas looks as though it is moving ever closer to concluding the ceasefire (Tahdi'a) deal with Israel. (For previous sit reps on this see 1 and 2.) A couple of important markers this morning:

-- Hamas PM Ismail Haniyeh has publicly laid out the terms and extent of the deal his movement seeks. That Reuters reports says this:

"There must be a commitment by Israel to end all acts of aggression against our people, assassinations, killings and raids, and lift the (Gaza) siege and reopen the crossings," Ismail Haniyeh, leader of Hamas's administration in the Gaza Strip, said in a speech. [It was at Gaza's Islamic University, much of which was destroyed by Fateh in fighting last year.]

A ceasefire, he said, should be "reciprocal, comprehensive and simultaneous," apply both to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and be approved by other Palestinian factions.

-- This same position is also substantially confirmed from Hamas's over-all leadership, the political bureau based in Damascus. The Hamas-linked PIC website also looks as though it is preparing Hamas's Palestinian supporters for the news of the hopefully imminent conclusion of the ceasefire deal, by framing it in the context of a report that Olmert has acknowledged his government's failure to stop the Gaza-originated rocket attacks on southern Israel.

-- Progress is also apparently being made in the effort to achieve an intra-Palestinian reconciliation. Hamas head Khaled Meshaal is supposed to be in Yemen today or tomorrow to help Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh along with that.

Paradoxically, as Israel and Hamas move closer to achieving a (hopefully) workable, Gaza-based ceasefire agreement Fateh boss and PA president Mahmoud Abbas will be taking on a new role: that of the "public face" of intermediation between the two sides. The leaders of both Israel and Hamas both need him to play that role, since neither of those sets of leaders wants to stand up and tell their people openly that they are dealing directly with the other.

Abu Mazen himself probably doesn't relish playing the role of "front man" for either of these two much bigger and more significant parties. But it's not as if he has many other options.

Update, Wed., 11:20 EST:

This new report from Haaretz's Ami Issacharoff neatly illustrates Abu Mazen's emerging role, and the weakness that has pushed him into it. Issacharoff wites:

A deal being formulated between Israel, Egypt and Hamas involves deploying Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' troops at the crossings with the Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources told Haaretz yesterday.

Note there who is doing the negotiating and who would merely get to be "deployed" by those negotiators...