Palestinian state now a distant dream
Afp, Ramallah
Hamas has emerged as a force to be reckoned with, but its seizure of the impoverished Gaza Strip has effectively split the Palestinians into two entities and driven the creation of an independent state further from reach. "Unfortunately this pushed us back, it pushed us back many years," stunned chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP a day after the Islamists overran forces loyal to his Fatah party in the Gaza Strip. "This is the worst thing I've seen since 1967," he said referring to the six day war when Israel seized control of east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, along with the Sinai and the Golan Heights. The takeover after days of fierce fighting has split the Paletinians into two entities, with Western-shunned Islamist Hamas lording over Gaza and Western-backed president Mahmud Abbas of secular Fatah in the West Bank. Efforts to make peace between Israelis and Palestinians had already been set back when Hamas -- considered a terror group by the European Union, Israel and the United States -- routed long-dominant Fatah in parliamentary polls in January 2006, ushering in a Western diplomatic and economic boycott. The overthrow of Palestinian Authority security services by the Islamists' armed wing and paramilitary force has made Palestinian aspirations of their own state with east Jerusalem an even more distant dream. The reason is two-fold -- the steamrolling has weakened the PA and installed in power in Gaza a movement whose charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. "Gaza is officially outside the (Palestinian) Authority's control. It's a mutiny now," Erakat said. The international community, including Israel's main ally the United States, had warned during the raging clashes that the internal bloodletting was endangering the prospects of a Palestinian state and peace with Israel. The Hamas takeover of Gaza will "toll the knell of the solution of an Israeli state and a Palestinian state side by side," Denmark had warned. With the routing completed, the peace process is more moribund that ever, wrote Israeli media. "The Palestinian Authority is dead, there is no one to talk to," said an editorial in the mass-selling Yediot Aharonot. The office of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is "convinced that in light of the PA's collapse, the American administration leaders will not put pressure on Olmert at this stage to come up with ideas for renewing the negotiations with Abu Mazen and promoting a diplomatic horizon," it said.
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