Barring any dramatic developments over the coming weekend, the agreement between Israel and Hamas is a fait accompli, and all that remains to be seen is when a formal announcement will be made. It may still take a few more days to hammer out certain issues that remain unresolved, such as how long the period of calm will last, when the bodies of Israeli soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin will be returned, along with the Israeli citizens currently being held by Hamas, and whether all the rival Palestinian factions will be brought under “the umbrella of the agreement.”
On the evening of Aug. 16, Israel confirmed that the head of Egypt's intelligence services, Maj. Gen. Abbas Kamel, paid a visit to the country one day earlier for meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Director of the Shin Bet Nadav Argaman. Then he continued on to Ramallah. In an unusual move, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ office did not release any statement about the visit. The reason for this is clear. Not only is Abbas opposed to entering under that “umbrella,” he has actually been launching a fierce attack against the arrangement.
Kamel's visit to Ramallah and the delay by the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank of an official announcement that the new arrangement has gone into effect are taking place in the shadow of a meeting in Ramallah of the PLO’s Central Committee. Its discussions were scheduled to end on Aug. 16, but it has since been decided to extend them by one more day, to give Abbas a chance to respond publicly, before an audience, to an arrangement that he opposes so vehemently.
According to a Fatah source, Abbas wants to deliver a firm speech to the council’s members, attacking anyone who welcomes the arrangement, since he believes that it perpetuates internal divisions among the Palestinian people, strengthens Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip and turns the idea of two separate and distinct geographic entities for the Palestinian people into an established fact. In the long term, it also postpones the creation of the Palestinian state into the distant future, when the creation of such a state was the ultimate goal of the life work of Abbas.
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