The platform of the new Palestinian government is a major "step backward" for peace prospects, and Israel will lobby the international community not to work with the coalition, a senior Israeli official said yesterday.
"Anyone who looks carefully at the document will see that there is a regression on a number of important issues," the official said in the first Israeli reaction to the completion of the Palestinian power-sharing deal late on Wednesday. He spoke on condition of anonymity because an official government statement has not been released.
He noted the platform's call for the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel and its affirmation of the Palestinian right of "resistance" against Israel. He said the language is even tougher than the original Palestinian power-sharing deal reached in Saudi Arabia last month.
The lineup of the new Palestinian unity government was to have been presented yesterday after rival factions Fatah and Hamas overcame weeks of wrangling to work together to lift crippling international sanctions.
Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas and prime minister-designate Ismail Haniya overcame the last stumbling block to the formation of a national unity government on Wednesday by agreeing on a candidate to lead the sensitive interior ministry.
Nabil Abu Rudeina, a spokesman for Abbas who heads the secular Fatah, said the government list would be presented to the legislative council.
He confirmed that Abbas selected Hani al-Qawasmeh, a top figure in the ministry, for the portfolio, from a list of names presented to him by Hamas.
Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for the rival Islamist movement Hamas, said Haniya had already asked parliament to convene tomorrow morning to vote on the new line-up.
In northern Gaza, however, nine people were wounded in armed clashes between Fatah and Hamas on Wednesday night, hospital sources and witnesses said. A dozen members of the two camps were kidnapped.
Fatah and Hamas agreed at a summit in Mecca last month to form a unity government after months of feuding that has left dozens of Palestinians dead.
The power wrangle has been simmering since Hamas unexpectedly trounced Fatah in a parliamentary election in January last year.
Palestinians are hoping the new Cabinet will lead to an end of a US- and EU-led boycott of the government, which was imposed after Hamas took power.
But it remained unclear whether the new coalition would lead to the lifting of the debilitating aid freeze.
The aid boycott has severely damaged the Palestinian economy, as the West has demanded that any Palestinian government renounce violence, recognize Israel and abide by past interim peace deals for the aid to resume.
Under the Mecca agreement, Abbas called on the new government to "respect" past agreements, something which Hamas has said it would do, while not specifically agreeing to abide by them.
In the new government's political program, extracts of which were obtained by reporters, Haniya is due to reaffirm that the coalition "will respect international resolutions and accords signed by the Palestine Liberation Organization."
The program says "a real peace" will not be established until Israel stops constructing its controversial separation barrier in the West Bank, dismantles settlements on occupied Palestinian land and frees all Palestinian prisoners.
Haniya is expected to say that negotiations will remain the prerogative of Abbas and that any accords reached will be put to a national referendum.
The program calls for a "complete truce" in Israeli-Palestinian violence on the condition that it is "reciprocated," while defending the Palestinians' "right of resistance."
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