U.S. May Shun A Fatah-Hamas Coalition
The United States has informed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that it will shun a future Hamas-Fatah coalition government because it will not explicitly recognize Israel, Abbas aides said Thursday.
That position would be a severe blow to Abbas, who is trying to reach a power-sharing deal to end Palestinian infighting and to get crippling international sanctions on the government lifted.
Last week, the two political rivals reached a coalition agreement in principle, and the Hamas-led government was to resign later Thursday to pave the way for a coalition government.
In other developments:
Until now, Washington had withheld judgment on the Fatah-Hamas power-sharing deal.
Abbas received word of the new U.S. position in a phone call from a senior U.S. State Department official late Wednesday, the aides said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue. A U.S. diplomat then delivered the same message to Abbas in person Thursday, the aides said.
The U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem had no immediate comment.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat would only say that U.S. officials have made it clear to the Palestinians that any government must adhere to the principles laid out by the Quartet of Mideast mediators — recognize Israel, renounce violence and back previous peace deals with Israel.
Erekat met with senior U.S. officials in Washington last week to prepare for a three-way Mideast summit in Jerusalem on Monday. He also was involved in the meeting Thursday between Abbas and the U.S. official.
"The Americans reiterated their position that their relations with the government will depend on the government's compliance with the Quartet's principles," he said.
Olmert told Turkish television that Israel was not happy with the coalition agreement.
"I am not certain that the full scope of this agreement is clear to anyone, the initial signs are not very encouraging," he said.
Olmert also agreed Thursday to allow a Turkish team to inspect the Jerusalem holy site, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said after meeting Olmert in Ankara.
"The works do not go anywhere near any holy site, and everybody can see that from the cameras," Israel Antiquities Authority spokeswoman Osnat Goaz said.
Israel also took action to stop expected protests following Friday prayers, banning Muslim men under the age of 50 from attending the service and sending 3,000 police officers to patrol Arab east Jerusalem, Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
Archaeologist Shimon Gibson of the University of North Carolina said the Muslim fears are rooted in the warren of nearly 50 tunnels, chambers and cisterns that run underneath the holy compound, some of them not far from the Mughrabi Gate. If Israel could access those subterranean spaces through the digs, some Muslims fear, they could destabilize the Islamic buildings.
Two incidents have fueled those fears. In 1969, an Australian Christian set fire to the Al Aqsa mosque hoping to speed the coming of the Messiah. In 1984, Israeli authorities arrested a group of Jewish extremists who had planned to dynamite the Dome of the Rock to expedite the rebuilding of the temple.
But history shows Israel does not want to harm the Islamic holy sites, said Gershom Gorenberg, an Israeli historian and journalist.
For one thing, the site has little importance for the secular Jews who make up a majority of Israel's population, while most Orthodox Jews believe it is forbidden to go there before a temple is rebuilt in the times of the Messiah, he said. They pray instead at the neighboring Western Wall, as Jews have for centuries.
Since the 1967 war, when Israel captured the compound from Jordan, Israel has left its administration to the Islamic Waqf and barred Jews from praying there to avoid angering Muslims. The division of responsibility left the ramp and the Mughrabi Gate under Israeli control.
With the exception of a few militantly nationalist Orthodox groups, there are rarely calls for any change in that status quo, Gorenberg said.
Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior research fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, said most Israelis were not attached to the compound itself.
In June 1967, when Israeli troops fought their way into the Old City, they found themselves on the compound, he said. They found an old Arab gatekeeper with a large key around his neck, and the man opened the Mughrabi Gate, let them out, and showed them the way down to the Western Wall, which was what they were really interested in, he said.
"For the paratroopers, the Mughrabi Gate wasn't a way on to the Temple Mount — it was a way off," Klein Halevi said.
For Muslims, fears that Israel wants to harm the mosques "fly in the face of their experience of the last 40 years," during which Israel has done nothing to compromise the Muslim holy sites, Gorenberg said.
"But Israel's inability to take those fears into account," he said, "also flies in the face of the experience of the last 40 years."