GAZA CITY, 23 March 2006 — Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh yesterday called a session of Palestinian Parliament for Saturday to approve his Cabinet. His announcement came after the Palestine Liberation Organization called on the movement to change its program. Hamas rejected that call immediately.
The Palestine Legislative Council (Parliament) session will last several days, but a vote of confidence in the new government will be taken Monday. The outcome is a foregone conclusion, since Hamas won 72 of the 132 seats in the Jan. 25 parliamentary election, trouncing President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah.
Haniyeh is forming a Cabinet with 24 Hamas activists and technocrats, after no other party agreed to join it. Hamas wanted Fatah in the government. Fatah declined.
The next legal steps are parliamentary approval and Abbas’ endorsement. But Abbas inserted an extra stage, putting the Hamas Cabinet and platform before the Fatah-dominated PLO Executive Committee. Predictably, the body refused to endorse them in a meeting yesterday.
Tayseer Khaled, member of the PLO Executive Committee, said after the meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah that the committee presented two letters — one to Abbas and the other to Haniyeh — in which the members expressed their rejection of the political program of the incoming government.
“It is impossible to have a government that is not recognizing the PLO as the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.” Khaled said.
Another PLO Executive Committee member, Yasser Abed Rabbo, said: “We decided that we can’t deal with the platform of this government or accept it, because the platform neglects the main achievement of the Palestinian people, which is the PLO.”
But Abbas does not have the authority to veto the Cabinet or its platform. Abbas was elected president in January 2005 and has three more years to serve, regardless of the makeup of the Parliament.
Fatah legislator Saeb Erekat said Abbas planned to send Haniyeh a letter today expressing the PLO’s reservations but authorizing the Hamas leader to present his Cabinet to the legislature this weekend. “He will tell them that he will not obstruct their ability to go to the council with the Cabinet,” he said.
Incoming Foreign Minister Mahmoud Al-Zahar, a top Hamas official, said the debate over Hamas’ governing program was over. “Nobody can make demands on us at this moment,” he said.
The main points of contention between the two are the status of the PLO and endorsement of interim peace accords. Hamas’ program also refuses to recognize a 1988 unilateral Palestinian declaration of independence that included a recognition of Israel.
For decades, the PLO, dominated by Abbas’ Fatah, has been recognized in the world as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. In that capacity, it negotiated agreements with Israel in the early 1990s that led to creation of the Palestinian Authority.
But Hamas opposes the PLO and rejects the agreements.
The PLO mandated the Palestinian Authority to assume its functions after agreeing the 1993 Oslo autonomy accords with Israel. In contrast, Hamas insists that its legitimacy is derived from the ballot box.
In another development, Egypt yesterday sent 150 truckloads of food aid to the Gaza Strip where the United Nations says Israeli closures have brought the impoverished area to the verge of starvation.
— Additional input from agencies
