Conventional American wisdom has it that bringing Hamas into a Fatah-led government will be a moderating force on the terror group. Give them something to lose, they say, and they won’t be so fast to give it up.
It appears, unfortunately, that the opposite is actually true. Ihab al-Ghussein, a former spokesman for the Hamas government in Gaza, said Sunday that Abu Mazen has assured Hamas leaders that he has no intention of fulfilling his commitments to the United States. Instead, al-Guyessein said that Abu Mazen’s public statements have been constructed “in order to ‘trick the Americans’”.
According to Palestinian Media Watch al-Ghussein posted a note on his Facebook page poking fun at Palestinians who trust Abbas and the reconciliation. “You know what Mahmoud Abbas says behind closed doors?? He says: ‘Guys, let me [continue] saying what I say to the media. Those words are meant for the Americans and the occupation (i.e., Israel), not for you [Hamas].
“What’s important is what we agree on among ourselves. In other words, when I go out [publicly] and say that the government is my [Abbas] government and it recognizes ‘Israel’ and so on, fine – these words are meant to trick the Americans. But we agree that the government has nothing to do with politics (i.e., foreign relations). The same thing happened in 2006,’ he [Abbas] said: ‘Don’t harp on everything I tell the media, forget about the statements in the media,’” al-Ghussein wrote.