Fatah Quits Palestinian Cabinet Until Fighting Stops (Update1)

Fatah Quits Palestinian Cabinet Until Fighting Stops (Update1)

By David Rosenberg and Saud Abu Ramadan

June 13 (Bloomberg) -- Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement voted to boycott meetings of the coalition Cabinet led by Hamas as gun battles between the groups' militants in the Gaza Strip left another nine people dead.

Fatah won't return to the national-unity government until the fighting stops, the group said in a statement late yesterday. Fatah's Central Committee made the decision during a meeting chaired by Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah. At least 55 people have been killed in the clashes over the past week.

The committee told Fatah supporters to ``foil a coup attempt carried out by a violent group of Hamas militants against the Palestinian Authority and its security apparatus,'' according to the statement.

more:http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=a45.TCXnAGcQ

13 Jun 2007 17:08:02 GMT

RAMALLAH, West Bank, June 13 (Reuters) - Escalating faction fighting in the Gaza Strip has rendered the Palestinian unity government all but irrelevant and it is the gunmen on the streets who are now in charge.

The unity coalition involving President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah group and the Hamas Islamists of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, formed in March, has not prevented clashes that have killed more than 60 Palestinians since Saturday.

"It is a kind of absurdity to have a unity government whose members are fighting each other," said Palestinian political analyst Samir Awad from Bir Zeit University in the West Bank.

The fighting may also harden a division of the territories where Palestinians have hoped to found their state into a Gaza controlled by Hamas and a West Bank dominated by Fatah, though analysts questioned how far such an outcome would be stable.

more:http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L12661467.htm

ANALYSIS-Hamas takeover in Gaza would short-circuit US plans
13 Jun 2007 18:14:55 GMT
Source: Reuters
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Background
Israeli-Palestinian conflict
More By Adam Entous

JERUSALEM, June 13 (Reuters) - A Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip would deal a blow to a U.S. peace push founded on the premise Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would be capable of reining in militants and Israel would embrace him as a partner.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and other senior officials said a Hamas victory in factional fighting against Abbas's secular Fatah movement would cast doubt on Abbas's ability to deliver on any agreements over a Palestinian state.

While warning of the risk of allowing Hamas to establish its own Iranian-backed mini-state on Israel's southern border, some Israeli officials said the deteriorating situation could be used by the Jewish state as leverage to get major European and Arab powers to intervene with a large international force in Gaza.

By backing calls for an international deployment that he knows few countries are clamouring to join, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert may merely be laying the ground work for Israel to act unilaterally against Hamas militants in an enclave from which Israel withdrew occupying troops in 2005, the officials said.

more:http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L1363999.htm

The government has basically been useless, inept and indecisive. Now it's just basically gone.
quote: "The government now is ineffective, irrelevant. It is not one that is capable of solving problems. The government is a manifestation of those problems," said analyst Bassem Izbeidi.

"The government will remain, but it does not govern. It will be there, but is incapable of doing its job. The situation will be completely paralysed," said another analyst, Ali al-Jarbawi.