1-Hamas:
A- No recognition of Israel
B- Continued right to use terror

2-Fatah: PLO recognition of Israel applies to Hamas

PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas PM Ismail Haniyeh announced an agreement last night to form a Palestinian unity government. However, the paradox of this arrangement is already clear. The motivation to form this government was to create a framework for the resumption of Western funding. But the new government does not meet the minimal conditions that the funding countries have demanded: Hamas´ recognition of Israel and the cessation of terror.

Note that the opening sentence in the article announcing the agreement in the official PA daily includes the expression of hope for renewed funding. Renewed funding is seen not as a secondary benefit of the unity government, but as the driving force behind the agreement.

The Fatah seems to be hoping that Hamas statements that they do not recognize Israel and reserve the right to use terror will be ignored by the West. The Fatah argues that all Palestinian Authority governments, including the new coalition, are “the result of the PLO” and therefore bound by agreements the Palestine Liberation Organization has made in the past.

According to Fatah, the fact that past PLO agreements have professed to accept Western conditions means that Hamas has, in effect, accepted these conditions as well.

It is yet to be seen how the funding countries will respond.

The following are the Hamas and Fatah reactions from today´s PA press:

HAMAS:

"Yesterday, President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh reached an agreement to form a national unity government, which raises hope among the citizens for the ending of the international isolation and resumption of aid...

Haniyeh said that the guidelines of any future political program will not hurt the legitimacy of the resistance [PA term for terror] while the Hamas movement said that it would not recognize Israel and that it had the right to continue the armed struggle against the Jewish state. This issue raises doubts whether the national unity government will fulfill the demands of the West for lifting the ban on aid to Palestinians… Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhari, told the French news agency, ‘There will be no recognition of the state of Israel by the movement. We want a Palestinian unity government based on Palestinian criteria and not foreign criteria.’”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Page 1, September 12, 2006]

FATAH:

"Spokesman for the Fatah movement, Mahir Miqdad...emphasized that the source of the authority for the Palestinian undertaking is the Palestine Liberation Organization ... and that the government or any Palestinian parliament are the result of the PLO and from the agreements that it [PLO] had made."
[Al-Quds, September 12, 2006]