The United States and other international officials have floated the name of former Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad as a possible compromise solution. But Fayyad, currently a professor at Princeton University, told me that he has nothing to do with the ongoing discussions. Fayyad said that he insists on what he has said publicly, namely that the day-after solution in Gaza must not be an isolated solution outside the legitimate, internationally recognized leadership of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. He also believes that the PLO must be expanded to include representatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. He told me that anyone governing Gaza needs to have the widest consensus of the various political/military powers of the Palestinian people. He knows that this idea might be anathema to Israel and maybe the United States, but he is confident that they will come around to accept it because everyone wants the day-after solution to be represented by a broad leadership, and this requires a consensus of the powers on the ground.
While these discussions have been going on behind the scenes in the Egyptian and Qatari capitals, Israel threw a monkey wrench in the discussions by a targeted assassination of senior Hamas leaders who were visiting the Hezbollah movement in Beirut. The January 2 drone attack that killed Hamas’s number two man, Saleh Al Arouri, and four other Hamas leaders caused a suspension by Hamas of all negotiations. Palestinians in the West Bank declared a one-day business strike on January 3 to protest the killing of Al Arouri, who is originally from the West Bank.
Not only did the Al Arouri assassination put a temporary end to the talks, but it is also bound to cause a delay in some of the behind-the-scenes attempts to reach some type of understanding between the PLO’s dominant group, Fatah, and Hamas. Jibril Rajoub, the secretary of Fatah, was authorized by Abbas to negotiate with Hamas on a deal that would allow Hamas to join the PLO. The lead person from Hamas who was holding the talks was the now-assassinated Al Arouri. Rajoub and Al Arouri were former prison friends and had established a good relationship that included both making positive public statements about each other.