Abbas Appoints Crisis Cabinet
Palestinian Leader Meets Resistance From Rival Hamas

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 18, 2007

JERUSALEM, June 17 -- Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas swore in an emergency cabinet Sunday and officially outlawed the armed wing and paramilitary security branch of the Hamas movement, saying it had carried out a "military coup against the Palestinian legitimacy and its government."

Hamas officials immediately condemned the move as illegal, further deepening the divide between what had been envisioned as the future parts of a Palestinian state. The United States and other foreign donors supported Abbas's decision on the eve of the Israeli prime minister's visit to Washington to discuss how best to engage the Palestinians.

Hours later, two rockets fired from Lebanon fell in northern Israel, damaging a car in the city of Kiryat Shemona. The rocket attack, confirmed by Israeli military officials, was the first from Lebanon since August, when a cease-fire ended Israel's 33-day war against the Shiite Muslim movement Hezbollah.

Israeli military officials said they were investigating whether Hezbollah or Palestinians living in refugee camps in Lebanon fired the 107mm rockets, which some officials said appeared to be cruder than the thousands Hezbollah fired into Israel during the war. It was unclear whether the attack was connected to Abbas's decision earlier in the day, and Hezbollah denied carrying out the strike.

Hamas, an armed Islamic movement that does not recognize Israel, has long held sway in the Gaza Strip, where nearly 1.5 million Palestinians, most of them refugees, live largely in poverty.

Israel evacuated its 8,500 settlers from Gaza, along with the soldiers who protected them, in the fall of 2005. In the more populous West Bank, where an estimated 250,000 Jewish settlers live in protected enclaves, Abbas's secular Fatah party remains politically strong.

Hamas officials in the Gaza Strip, which the movement seized last week in a rout of the Palestinian security services dominated by Fatah, said they do not recognize the new government, installed without the approval of the Palestinian parliament that their party controls.

Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas official whom Abbas fired as prime minister last week, said in a statement that the formation of the emergency cabinet has "no basis in law." He declared that the power-sharing government created in March by Fatah and Hamas officials to end a previous round of factional fighting remains in charge.

"The national unity government asserts here that we are fulfilling our duty according to our law," Haniyeh said.

Israeli officials praised Abbas's move, which followed his dissolution of the Hamas-led unity government on Thursday after fighting in Gaza left more than 100 people dead and 500 others wounded.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert signaled that a new Palestinian government, free of Hamas, could prove an opportunity to renew peace negotiations on the creation of a Palestinian state.

Olmert arrived in the United States on Sunday and will meet with President Bush. Their talks are likely to focus on the situation in the Palestinian territories and how to improve the standing of moderate Palestinian officials such as Abbas and the new prime minister, Salam Fayyad, an independent lawmaker and former official with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Abbas has indicated that he intends to call new elections, although he has not suggested a date for a national vote his party is not certain to win. Palestinian officials said Sunday that the law requires Abbas to seek parliamentary approval of the new cabinet within 30 days.

Gaza is now entirely in the hands of Hamas, which defeated Fatah in January 2006 parliamentary elections to take day-to-day control of the government.

The Palestinian Authority was established 13 years ago by the Oslo accords, and Abbas was elected its titular head in January 2005 after the death of Yasser Arafat. Western donors suspended aid to the government following the Hamas victory last year, making it impossible to pay civil service salaries in full.

"I think what we are seeing now is the gradual dissolution of the Palestinian Authority," said Mustafa Barghouti, an independent lawmaker who was information minister in the unity government. "The only way to avoid this is to hold new national elections."

Barghouti, who declined Abbas's invitation to join the emergency cabinet, said the body faces several immediate challenges.

"It cannot impose its authority in Gaza on the ground in any meaningful way, it has limited authority in the West Bank under Israeli occupation, and it soon will face legal questions" once its term expires in 30 days, Barghouti said. "Of course, the far larger problem is how do we emerge from this standoff?"

Abbas's decree Sunday outlawed Hamas's armed wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, and its roughly 5,000-member paramilitary unit in Gaza called the Executive Force, both of which he has called on previously to join the official government security services.

A Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Sami Abu Zouhri, said Abbas "unfortunately is involved in the American-Israeli conspiracy, along with some Arab parties, to bring down the Hamas movement." The Bush administration has begun sending $40 million to train and provide nonlethal military equipment to Abbas's forces.

"Hamas as a movement has ties and roots to the hearts of the Palestinians, and the resistance will continue and cannot be stopped," Abu Zouhri said.

International donors who cut off funds to the Palestinian Authority after Hamas's electoral victory have endorsed Abbas's decision to dissolve the power-sharing government, brokered this year by the Saudi royal family.

Olmert has also signaled a willingness to release to Abbas some of the roughly $700 million in Palestinian tax revenue frozen by Israel, but he indicated Sunday that he would wait until it became clear how the Palestinian Authority would function.

Already, though, Israel and foreign countries are establishing distinct policies toward Gaza and the West Bank, and there are signs their approaches may differ.

Although the Bush administration and the European Union consider Hamas a terrorist organization, both have called for a continuation of humanitarian aid to Gaza despite new difficulties in delivering it now that Hamas monitors the border crossings, which have remained closed throughout the recent fighting. Eight in 10 Gaza residents rely on U.N. agencies for food assistance.

However, Israeli officials said Sunday that Gaza should be sealed off further.

"We should simply increase the isolation of Gaza from Judea and Samaria," Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Israel's Army Radio, using the biblical terms for the West Bank. "We must close them off totally. We must stop all the aid, all the help. I want to stop everything until we understand what is going on there."

The Israeli company that supplies fuel to Gaza, Dor Alon, suspended deliveries to the strip Sunday, citing an inability to coordinate with Hamas officials on the other side of the crossings and a lack of payment. The company said it would continue supplying fuel needed to run Gaza's electricity plant, which the Palestinian Authority has agreed to continue paying for.

Shlomo Dror, spokesman for Israel's coordinator of government activities in the territories, said, "In our view, this fuel is part of the humanitarian assistance we must provide." But he said he believed the Palestinian Authority, whose leadership is now in the West Bank, does not want to pay for fuel for Gaza in order to pressure Hamas.

"In a way, we think they are trying to cause a humanitarian crisis," Dror said.

A possible Israeli move against Hamas -- a Sunni Muslim movement that during the financial aid embargo of the Palestinian Authority over the past 18 months has accepted millions of dollars from Iran's Shiite government -- gained support Sunday from a variety of quarters.

Binyamin Netanyahu, head of the opposition Likud Party, told Army Radio that "Israel will not be able to accept the existence and strengthening of an Iranian base at the periphery of Tel Aviv over time."

"I would increase the diplomatic isolation, as well as diplomatic coordination with Egypt and Jordan, with the help of the U.S., in order to in the end topple the Hamas regime," Netanyahu said.