GAZANS GATHERED early yesterday morning at a makeshift roadblock south of the Erez crossing into Israel to welcome Ruda Habib and her 18-month old son, freed from jail in Israel in exchange for a video of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
Ms Habib and her cousin Fatma Zek were arrested at Erez in May 2007 after Israeli intelligence discovered they intended to carry out suicide bombings in Israel on behalf of Islamic Jihad. Zek is set to be freed on Sunday.
On the Israeli side of Erez, scores of Shalit supporters staged a rally aimed at boosting pressure on both Hamas and the Israeli government to conclude a deal to exchange as many as 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for the 23-year-old sergeant captured by Hamas affiliates in 2006.
They paraded with Israeli flags and posters of the young man while a school group unrolled a banner-petition calling for his release.
Ms Habib’s uncle and brother waited in the sun to meet her. Once in Gaza, she was greeted by Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s de facto prime minister, who said the freeing of 20 Palestinian women, 18 into the West Bank, amounted to a “triumph” for the resistance.
Rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah are expected to approve a reconciliation plan later this month at a ceremony in Cairo attended by officials from Arab states.
Hamas, which rules Gaza, has already accepted the reconciliation plan presented by Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman but Fatah, which holds sway in the West Bank, has yet to agree.
Mahmoud Zahar, leader of Hamas’s Gaza delegation at this week’s talks in Cairo, told The Irish Times that his movement’s approval of the Egyptian plan represented only the first step towards the reconciliation of the two Palestinian groups.
“The deal is good but needs a lot of effort to succeed,” he said.
“This is not the end but the start. We have to implement what we have already agreed upon, including the release of prisoners, before tackling the main issues dividing the two sides.”
He said the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority is holding 1,000 prisoners, including 600 from Hamas and its allies. However he insisted that prisoners in jails in Hamas- controlled Gaza came from all factions and were “under trial for crimes they committed”.
Among the issues requiring resolution are the holding of elections for president and parliament, restructuring of the security services and the reform of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) to include Palestinians in the occupied territories and the diaspora in decision-making.
This would mean expanding the PLO to embrace Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other excluded factions.
Differences would be resolved in a committee of all PLO factions and Egypt.
Dr Zahar revealed that Hamas and Egypt had agreed that elections should take place in June rather than on January 25th, the date set by the Fatah- dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank.
The election date remains a bone of contention.
“The security forces issue is very big,” he said. “It is going to be a long story before we implement [changes].” Asked if Fatah had the will to see this through, he replied, “No.”
He also suggested that this process could be complicated by US general Keith Dayton, who has been supervising the reformation of the West Bank security apparatus.
Dr Zahar suggested that Egypt and the Arab counties were committed to Palestinian reconciliation and unity for two reasons.
Palestinian divisions do not serve their interests and Egypt’s border with Gaza gives rise to concern that potential unrest in Gaza could spread to Egypt.
“It is too early to speak about US support for reconciliation,” he said. Washington “is concentrating on relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. We cannot touch any positive statements about reconciliation.”
Dr Zahar called for an end to the conditions for participation in peace talks imposed by the international quartet composed of the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and Russia. These conditions demand that Hamas recognise Israel, halt armed resistance to the Israeli occupation and accept agreements reached between the PLO/PA and Israel.
Hamas has countered these demands by saying it would endorse a Palestinian state in East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank, abide by a long-term ceasefire with Israel and respect agreements made by the PLO/PA and Israel.
Dr Zahar said there was no dissent within Hamas – as there was within Fatah – about adopting the Egyptian proposal.
“Our decision is a collective one. If any [leader] from Hamas says Yes, it is a common agreement,” he said.