by Graham Usher [Middle East Report Online, August 21, 2005]

(Graham Usher, a contributing editor of Middle East Report, covers Palestine for Middle East International and al-Ahram Weekly.)

“In March 2005, Hamas, the largest Islamist party in Palestine, joined its main secular rival Fatah and 11 other Palestinian organizations in endorsing a document that seemed to embody the greatest harmony achieved within the Palestinian national movement in almost two decades. By the terms of the Cairo Declaration, Hamas agreed to "maintain an atmosphere of calm" -- halt attacks on Israel -- for the rest of the year, participate in Palestinian parliamentary elections scheduled for July and commence discussions about joining the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). In the eyes of many, the Islamist party had not come so close to reconciliation with Fatah since it emerged as a political force in the late 1980s, and certainly not since Fatah became the dominant party within the Palestinian Authority (PA) created in 1994. “This is a turning point for the region,” said top PA negotiator Nabil Abu Rideina of the Cairo Declaration.

In July, Hamas and PA police forces squared off in armed clashes in Gaza that left two dead and scores wounded in the worst intra-Palestinian violence since the second intifada erupted in the fall of 2000, and arguably since November 1994, when the PA police shot dead 14 Palestinians during a Hamas demonstration outside Gaza’s Palestine mosque.

What brought about the fall from concord in Cairo to confrontation in Gaza? ...”

Read more...