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Are the Palestinians Serious About Reconciliation?

Despite the talk of Palestinian national reconciliation, it is still undetermined how a political reconciliation can proceed and who will make the first compromise, Mohammed Suliman writes from Gaza.
Palestinians warm themselves by a fire inside a house, which witnesses said was damaged in an Israeli air strike during an eight-day conflict, in the northern Gaza Strip December 20, 2012. Eight days of Israeli air strikes on Gaza and cross-border Palestinian rocket attacks ended in an Egyptian-brokered truce agreement last month calling on Israel to ease restrictions on the territory. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem (GAZA - Tags: CONFLICT)

In the wake of the recent Israeli military operation in Gaza coded “Pillar of Defense” which killed 168 Palestinians, including 37 children and 14 women, as well as six Israelis, Hamas’ popularity has remarkably increased amongst Palestinians. Israel did not win in Gaza, and Hamas was not defeated. As Adam Shaltz exhaustively explains, Hamas “won an implicit recognition as a legitimate actor from the United States (which helped to broker the talks in Cairo) and achieved concrete gains, above all an end to targeted assassinations and the easing of restrictions on the movement of people and the transfer of goods at the crossings.”

While Hamas’ rockets fell in Israeli cities around the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority found itself in a predicament as Palestinians became unprecedentedly fed up and disillusioned with the PA’s negotiation-based policy. The PA had long before realized the U.S. had failed to make good on its promises to grant the Palestinians a state on 1967 borders. The PA has been left completely isolated in the face of its rival’s growing popularity.

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