Kum Ba Yah Undone
Roughly 48 hours after the signing of the agreement between Hamas and Fatah to form a unity government and work together, trouble started brewing. While, we love the idea of Palestinian leaders holding hands, making out and holding a joint press conference, Arab news sources reported Mahmoud Abbas, the PLO chairman and the Palestinian president had a plan of his own.
In Ramallah during a Saturday press conference with EU head Javier Solana today. He insisted that Hamas accepts the two state solution in order to start working with them. Even according to this interpretation, Hamas would only be aligned with the next Israeli government, at worse.
Why is Abbas playing with conditions now? It could hurt the more important project of unity. Hamas Spokesperson, Aiman Taah:
Abbas statements jeopardize the chances of forming a unity government
Clearly, President Abbas has either changed his mind, or received a pissy call from Washington. Perhaps Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reminded President Abbas that he might be grounded and lose his allowance. Hillary herself is on the hot seat (imagine that) with some Jewish leaders for doing nothing more than stating the obvious, that Israel is not doing enough to alleviate the Palestinian suffering.
One thing is for sure, Algeria remains the the land of a million martyrs, but thanks to this unity agreement, Palestine is now officially the land of a million committees.
