It is many years since the hope expressed by a Palestinian leader that peace talks with Israel would resume soon has sounded anything more than the expression of a longing. It is happening now. When President Mahmoud Abbas said yesterday in Amman, on his way back from Cairo, that the peace process would move forward, he had ground realities on his side. For the first time ever since the conflict began, hard-liners on both sides have realized that, no matter how justified their cause may be, as things now stand, they have no hope of winning peace on their terms.
With all its military might, Israel has found that there is no way in which it can get the Palestinians to lie down and surrender, no matter how many people it kills or how many homes it demolishes. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided to pull back from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank not because he was touched by the misery of the Palestinians there, but because it was an occupation he could not sustain. Hence, he needs an environment in which he can carry out his planned withdrawal without the Palestinians shooting at his forces and claiming victory.
For their part, armed resistance groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad have been weakened militarily. They have also lost much of their strength with the assassination of many of their top leaders. More telling has been the shift in public perception about suicide bombings in Israel. This desire by both the parties to lay aside violence ensures that, unlike in the past, peace efforts will not be sabotaged by either Israel or Palestinian groups.
Driven by the new compulsions, all the important armed factions are planning to enter politics. Hamas is joining the battle of the ballot in July by fielding candidates in the legislative polls to be held that month. Islamic Jihad, for its part, fought a tough battle in Cairo demanding opportunities for all shades of opinion for political participation and a share in decision-making.
One of the most important decisions that came out of the Cairo meeting was the agreement to amend the current electoral law to establish a proportional party-list system for the upcoming legislative polls and the next two rounds of municipal elections in April and August. That will give smaller factions, that would have been left out of the process under the first-past-the-post system, their fair share in the political life of Palestine. That will, as a PFLP leader said, “allow for the true representation of Palestinian political forces in Parliament and for their real participation in political decision-making.” Even though that would result in reducing the number of seats Hamas would have got under the old system, the organization has accepted the change.
All these developments put Abbas in a position from where he can speak with confidence of his people’s support. If he succeeds in convincing the United States to put pressure on Israel to resume talks in earnest and implement in full the package of goodwill measures offered at the Sharm El-Sheikh summit last month, the peace process will have begun to move forward.
