JStone
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Hamas Clinging To Gaza As Unity Remains Elusive
Hamas clinging to Gaza as unity remains elusive - Yahoo! News
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Efforts to reunify the Palestinians behind one leadership appear to have hit a dead end: Hamas leaders ruling the Gaza Strip have concluded that subordinating themselves to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would be wasting a golden opportunity offered by the Arab Spring.
The thinking, as revealed in interviews with top Hamas officials, is that the regional rise of political Islam in the wake of the past year's uprisings means this is the time for their Islamic militant group to dominate.
"We want the West Bank to come under the Gaza umbrella, simply because Gaza is liberated, and the government there is elected," said a top Hamas official, referring to 2006 parliamentary elections that produced a short-lived Hamas-led government in the West Bank and Gaza. After Hamas' violent takeover of Gaza in 2007, the Western-backed Abbas dismissed that government and appointed his own in the West Bank.
A unity deal brokered by Qatar last month was to end five years of separate governments — Hamas in Gaza and Abbas in the West Bank. Under the agreement, Abbas is to lead an interim government of independent technocrats for several months, until elections. As interim prime minister, he would regain at least a measure of control in Gaza.
The ongoing Hamas-Fatah standoff means anomalies of life in Gaza will continue.
Once a month, employees of the two rival Palestinian governments line up on opposite sides of Omar al-Mukhtar Street in Gaza City to collect their salaries. Hamas loyalists get paid at the main post office. Civil servants and troops employed by Abbas before the Hamas takeover and now paid by him to stay home pick up their cash from a nearby bank.
"We are living in a country with two governments, and aren't even able to live," said Munther Abu Hattab, standing outside the post office. "We hope that reconciliation will work, but on the ground, there is no reconciliation."
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