30 april 2011, another step to parastine

Amidst other middle east events for once making the headlines, surprising news on the palestinian front, as fatah and hamas emerge from years of stalemate to take a tentative but huge stride towards reconciliation. This is a process rather than an agreement, but it marks a striking turning of the super-tanker in the journey towards the palestinian unity necessary to bring about september's declaration of a palestinian state (see 16 april 2011). The dangers for israel are clear, as depressingly-quickly pointed out by netanyahu, already ringing the pavlovian bell of hamas takeover of the west bank and iranian missiles raining down on tel aviv to generate a sense of siege and emergency that the israeli public generally reacts to by backing the government. There is though another israeli view to this hasty sourness towards every arab initiative, and tzipi livni again emerges as the sensible voice of the centre in saying that we must wait for any new government's actions, and invoking the quartet's help; it would be good indeed if this moribund initiative was somehow resuscitated. However, the key response is from within israel, and the key question there whether over time livni's kadima party can hold out against joining a rejectionist national unity government, and instead thread a way through to support a government that involves hamas tying itself into a fatah consensus to bend over backwards to establish a state in the pre-67 borders only: the basis of the two-state solution the centre has supported in theory for decades. The time for the peace process as cover for business as has become usual is drawing to a close, it's time for the real thing.