Fayyad plans for statehood as Egypt tries to end Palestinian internal feuds

As Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad unveiled on Tuesday a plan to establish a Palestinian statehood in two years, Gaza ruling Hamas movement revealed that Egypt is working on a document to end its feuds with Fatah party.

Fayyad told a news conference in Ramallah that a de facto state will be created in two years "without waiting for the results of the peace negotiations with Israel."

The statehood would exist on the territories that Israel captured in the 1967 war, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

"We will establish the basic infrastructure of the Palestinian statehood. We should take the initiative and spare no efforts to make it a fact on the ground," Fayyad said, stressing that security, economic and institutional reforms are cornerstones of the plan.

Building an international airport in the West Bank and a railway linking the Palestinian territories with neighboring countries are also listed in the plan.

Observers believe that hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government would reject Fayyad's plan.

"I don't think Fayyad's plan will be implemented as long as Israel keeps occupying and controlling the West Bank and Jerusalem and rejects to endorse a two-state solution, which calls for the ending of its occupation and the establishment of a Palestinian statehood," said Ra'ed Afana, an academic at al-Azhar University in Gaza.

Netanyahu, who took office as Israel's premier in early April, said that Jerusalem is Israel's eternal capital and refused to stop Jewish settlement activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the return of Palestinian refugees.

Netanyahu also stressed that he only accepts the establishment of a demilitarized Palestinian state, without Jerusalem as its capital and without the right of Palestinians to return to the state of Israel.

If the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state, "Israel would recognize a demilitarized Palestinian state," Netanyahu said.

The declaration of his plan comes at a time when peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority were halted due to the Jewish state's refusal to endorse a two-state solution and its continuation of settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, the plan calls for achieving "a national unity between Gaza and the West Bank," which needs the reconciliation between Hamas and President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement.

However, U.S. President Barack Obama is to present a new peace plan on September which aims at resuming the Middle East peace process between Israel and the Arabs.

Fayyad's declaration coincided with an announcement of a senior Hamas leader Salah al-Bardaweel saying that Egypt, which sponsors the reconciliation dialogue, "is working on a document on issues agreed upon between Fatah and Hamas in the past rounds of dialogue."

Salah al-Bardaweel told the Gaza-based pro-Hamas "Falastin" daily that the document will depend on what had been agreed upon in Cairo in 2005 and the document of national accordance in 2006.

Al-Bardaweel revealed that Cairo "has recently brought to Hamas reassuring letters from President Abbas indicating that he has a desire to achieve reconciliation and the release of political prisoners in the West Bank."

Hamas insists that Abbas must free all its prisoners in the West Bank before resuming its dialogue with Fatah in Cairo, which was postponed until late September.

"Despite reassuring letters of Abbas, we haven't seen the implementation of his new ideas to succeed the dialogue," said al-Bardaweel, expecting that the situation "would remain the same as long as Fatah links the reconciliation to holding elections on time in Jan. 2010."

Meanwhile, Afana said that as long as Hamas is ruling the Gaza Strip, and "as long as there is no end to feuds between Fatah and Hamas and the Palestinians are not united, Israel will keep using this as an excuse to escape from resuming the talks to reach a permanent peaceful settlement."