JERUSALEM, March 20 (UPI) -- The radical Islamic Hamas is facing difficult hurdles in its attempts to form a functioning government.
Sunday it tacitly acknowledged failure. Wednesday, its list of 24 ministers and the Cabinet-guidelines will come before the Palestine Liberation Organization's Executive Committee led by its main rival -- Fatah. Formally, the PLO, that claims to represent some 10 million Palestinians worldwide, is superior to the Palestinian Authority that represents only the 4.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Hamas was charged with forming the next Palestinian Authority government since it won the elections to its Legislative Council. It controls 78 of the council's 132 seats.
Hamas does not need coalition partners to win a majority but sought a broad based government to face what its spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri described as, "The huge challenges." With the United States, Israel and the European Union considering Hamas a terrorist organization, and refusing to deal with it unless it changes, having amenable partners could be an asset. All the more so since the PA needs foreign aid to survive.
Fatah rejected Hamas' invitation. Fatah was still smarting from its defeat in the elections. "Everybody is still in shock," outgoing Minister for Prisoners' Affairs, Sufian Abu-Zaida said Thursday.
Some Fatah members advocated staying in the opposition, letting Hamas try and run affairs and try to beat it in the next elections. Fatah was also under enormous pressure from international system, including the United States and Israel, not to help Hamas, History Professor Roger Heacock of Bir Zeit University in the West Bank, told United Press International.
The smaller factions also shunned Hamas. Former Finance Minister Salaam Fayaad said his two-member would not join Hamas without Fatah. The two-seat Al-Badil, that includes communists, was too secular for the Islamic movement. Mustafa Barghouthi's list has all along supported a two-state solution, something Hamas refuses to accept, noted Heacock.
The three-member Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine had been the most likely coalition partner. Jerusalem Times noted its political views were closer to Hamas' than to Fatah's. PFLP representatives in last year's local elections allied with Hamas to take over major West Bank municipalities.
Sunday the PFLP, too, turned Hamas down. The PFLP's leader, Jamil al-Majdalawi, told al-Jazeera TV: "We informed the brothers in Hamas ... we are not going to participate in the government because the political program did not include a fundamental point for us -- that the PLO is the sole, legitimate representative of the Palestinian people."
In recent months the Islamic movement has been following pragmatic tactics. It ceased direct attacks on Israel; Prime Minister-designate Ismail Haniyeh told CBS News he hoped to sign a peace agreement with Israel; He said he never ordered any attacks on Israel and would not consider letting his son be a suicide bomber. Hamas' list of Cabinet nominees includes a woman and a Christian.
However, Hamas would not compromise on ideology.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (aka Abu Mazen) demanded the new cabinet recognize PLO's 1988 declaration of Palestinian independence; The Arab League resolutions, including those passed in Beirut in 2002 that talk of establishing a Palestinian state within the pre-1967 boundaries which entails recognizing Israel; And the United Nations Resolutions pertaining to the Palestinians such as Security Council Resolution 242 that calls for an Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories to recognized and secure boundaries." Hamas' charter seeks to destroy Israel, not live alongside it.
For a month "everybody was looking for formulas how to bypass those resolutions," Abu Zaida told a conference the Hebrew University organized in Jerusalem.
"For 10 years they (Hamas taught an entire generation one principal: The armed struggle ...(in which) they go straight to heaven. Suddenly they have to change... They know that forming a government requires a political price ...but they can't," Abu-Zaida said.
Prof. Shaul Mishal who specializes in Hamas, told UPI the power structure within the Islamic movement, after the election, is "very fragile."
Hamas is weak in the West Bank because its leadership is in Israeli jails. The prisoners believe they will be released only if Hamas kidnaps Israelis, not as result of negotiations and a ceasefire, he said.
Heacock noted Hamas had been ready to recognize the PLO as "one" of the Palestinians' legitimate representatives and accept the declaration of independence as "a" founding document.
That was not good enough for the other factions and Abu Mazen noted, Sunday, "We and the new government are facing difficulties and obstacles."
Taking the matter to the PLO's Executive Committee seems an attempt to revive a rather defunct organization in order to force Hamas' hand.
"Suddenly the PLO is everything and the Parliament is subjected to the PLO," said Heackock.
"In theory it was that way, always .... The PLO has to approve the ministers, the program," he said.
However, "Everybody knew the PLO was totally out of the picture that former President (Yasser) Arafat did not give a dam about the PLO and that nobody gave a dam about the PLO any more." Arafat and Abu Mazen didn't consider it when they fought over appointments, he maintained.
"Now suddenly the PLO has become important again... (In order) to limit Hamas' maneuvering room ... 'The PLO is above you, above all of us,'" he added cynically.
This might turn out to be one step in Abu Mazen's moves. The sequel would be next Monday at the Arab summit conference in Khartoum, Sudan.
There the entire Arab world might press Hamas to accept the 2002 Arab peace plan. Such a broad-based appeal would have much greater effect on the Palestinian Islamic movement that Fatah's pressure, predicted Mishal.
Such a move would have a particular twist in Sudan. In September 1967, right after the Six Day War, Arab heads of state met in Khartoum and resolved not to recognize Israel, not to negotiate with it, nor make peace with it.
