Jerusalem — Whenever he is asked about prospects for a two-state solution, Moshe Elad, who was the first head of Israeli-Palestinian security coordination after the Oslo Accords, answers with a question of his own: “In the West, people see removing settlements as the most effective way of moving things forward. But say we reach a point where settlements are removed. Where the hell do we go from there?”
Elad, now a researcher at the Haifa-based Technion, took part in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in the late 1990s, and says that the sticking points today are the same as they were during those meetings. Only at least back then, negotiators on the Palestinian side could talk for their people.
Now, while the same negotiators, members of the Palestine Liberation Organization, claim the same mandate to determine the future of the West Bank and Gaza, the rival Hamas faction rules Gaza. Washington-based Palestinian affairs expert Nathan Brown, who was a member of the international advisory committee on drafting the Palestinian constitution, professes deep concern. “You can get someone to sign on the dotted line — maybe — but if they do, it’s not very clear who they speak for,” he said.
The division cuts to the heart of Palestinian society. According to a poll published in March by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, an independent think tank, 28% of Palestinians believe that the Gaza-based government is the legitimate one, and 26% believe that the West Bank one is legitimate. The question of who speaks for the Palestinians is even more complicated when one considers the fact that some 31% of respondents considered both to be illegitimate.
http://forward.com/articles/126684/
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