Good tidings from Palestine

Goods news has been emanating from war-torn Middle East. Fatah and Hamas have signed a reconciliation deal on October 11, 2017, ending their 10-year rift. Mediated by Egypt, the agreement was signed in Cairo. Hamas would recognise the authority of the Palestinian Authority and a unity administration would be formed in the Gaza Strip. The Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority Rami Hamdallah has already visited Gaza and a move is said to be afoot to form a unity government.

Relations between Fatah and Hamas factions soured following the death of Yasser Arafat in 2005. The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) got divided and a unified demand for establishing a separate state for Palestinians in the occupied territories has remained uncertain until now.

Israel vacated the Gaza Strip in 2005. Election was held in Gaza the following year, 2006. Hamas won the election and virtually drove out the Fatah-led forces of the Palestinian Authority from the Gaza Strip. Since then several attempts were made for reconciliation between the two factions of the Palestinians. Last, they signed reconciliation agreement in April of 2014 but to no effect.

Mahmud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, has welcomed the October 11 agreement from West Bank. He has said the Palestinians are now united and both West Bank and Gaza strip will be under one unified Palestinian Authority.

Gaza Strip has been under constant threat from Israel. The worst was the 50-day war, the Operation Protective Edge, in 2014. The war took lives of 2,100 Palestinian soldiers and people while Israel lost 66 soldiers and six civilian. According to the United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA), 300,000 Palestinians took shelter in schools while 20,000 homes were estimated to have been rendered inhabitable.

Since then people in Gaza Strip are on dole by some Arab countries and Turkey. The United Arab Emirate and Qatar have invested to rebuild Gaza Strip. Amir of Qatar visited Gaza strip on October 22, 2012 to make commitment to rebuild two housing complexes, rehabilitate three main roads and build a prosthetic plant at a cost of $400 million while United Arab Emirate (UAE) transferred $15 million to specific projects under supervision of Egyptian engineers.

Having seen unification trend between Fatah and Hamas Israel demanded on October 12 that Hamas must disarm and recognise Israel. The United States also echoed similar demands. Since Fatah and Hamas are now united there is no logic to recognize Israel separately by Hamas. The Palestininan Authority has already recognised Israel as a state.

Israel has been gradually isolated from international community as can be seen from the acceptance of the Palestinian Authority as member of various bodies of the United Nations. The Palestinian Authority won non-member observer status in the United Nations on November 29, 2012, . In April of 2015, it became a member of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. That Israel has been shunned by the international community is reflected in a landmark UN Security Council resolution of December 22, 2016 which demands a "halt to all Israeli settlement in occupied territories" (the United States abstained from the Security Council meeting). Following the entry of the Palestinian Authority in UNESCO in October of 2011, it has been enrolled as a member of Interpol, world's leading security network on September 27 this year. The US administration has denounced this move of UNESCO as 'anti-Israel bias' and also announced its decision of withdrawing from it.

Against this backdrop, about 5000 Israeli and Palestinian women, dressed in White, marched through West Bank and Israel to reach Jerusalem on October 08, calling political leaders to reach a political solution of the Palestinian crisis. They demanded to "change the paradigm that we have been taught for seven decades that only war would bring peace". This group is known as Women Wage Peace which was formed in 2014 after Operation Protective Edge by Israel.

It is high time Israel realised the folly of undermining the demand for a separate state of the Palestinians in compliance with international law. Similarly, both Fatah and Hamas should remain united. To conclude with an observation President Barack Obama made in his 2009 Cairo speech: "Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel's right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine's".

The writer is a retired diplomat from Bangladesh and former President of Nova chapter of Toastmaster International

club of America.

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