Highlights of Hamas-Fatah agreement
Highlights of a tentative agreement reached by negotiators from Hamas and the Fatah movement on a common political platform that could lead to negotiations with Israel.
A Palestinian state
The deal calls for ``establishing an independent Palestinian state with full sovereignty on all land occupied in 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital and the guarantee of the right of refugees to return to their homeland.
What's new: Accepts a state in the West Bank and Gaza, the areas Israel occupied in the 1967 war, implicitly accepting that Israel exists alongside it, in contrast to Hamas's charter that calls for the destruction of Israel.
What's not new: The agreement does not offer recognition of Israel.
Points of conflict: It calls for Israel to return to 1967 borders, while Israel says it will keep some of the West Bank, and demands the right for Palestinian refugees to return to Israel and be compensated, something Israel rules out.
The use of violence
``The Palestinian people have the right to resist, and cling to the option of resisting the occupation by all means and the concentration of the resistance in the occupied territories of 1967 in addition to the political, negotiation, diplomacy and the continuation in the masses of popular resistance against the occupation in all its forms. . ."
What's new: ``Concentrates" attacks on Israelis in the occupied territories, rather than within Israel .
What's not new: Reserves the right to use violence and does not rule out its use even within Israel.
Points of conflict: Fatah, which officially renounced violence after the 1993 Oslo Accords, originally wanted the document to restrict violence to the occupied territories. Israel, the United States, the European Union, and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan have called for an unconditional renunciation of violence.
A representative body for Palestinians worldwide
The draft agreement authorizes the Palestine Liberation Organization and Abbas to negotiate on behalf of Palestinians, and requires that any future agreement be approved by ``the new Palestinian National Council" -- referring to an assembly that represents Palestinians living not only in the West Bank and Gaza but all over the world.
What's new: The agreement allows Abbas to negotiate with Israel and accepts the primacy of the PLO, which Hamas long saw as a rival and which signed the Oslo Accords with Israel. It agrees that the arbiter of a final settlement will be the Palestinian National Council and not the Hamas-dominated Palestinian legislature, as Hamas originally wanted.
Points of conflict: Hamas thinks it now deserves to dominate the PNC because of its election victory in January. Fatah will certainly oppose that.
What's not in the agreement: The document doesn't meet any of the three conditions that Israel and the so-called Quartet of Middle East faciliators -- the United States, European Union, Russia, and the United Nations -- laid out as conditions for Hamas to avoid international isolation: recognizing Israel, renouncing violence, and accepting all international agreements, including the US-sponsored ``road map" that requires the Palestinian Authority to dismantle terrorist organizations.
Source: Nayef Rajoub, Hamas official
Globe staff graphic/ Sa'id Ghazali and Anne Barnard
