Sharm al-Sheikh conference against Cairo Agreement

Mehdi Shakibayi: Eghity government and institutions attended a Gaza reconstruction conference in the Egyptian Sharm al-Sheikh resort and vowed to donate 4.45 billion dollars in aid in two years for rebuilding the destruction left by the Israeli invasion of the territory.

The donors however have made the transfer of the aid into the Palestinian lands conditional on the Palestinian Authority's taking charge of the promised money.

The conditioning of aid to a particular movement in Palestine has breached the humanitarian attitude of the donation and turned it into a politicized move.

On the other hand, the gradual payment of the money (in two years) signals that the donors have imposed constraints both on the Palestinian resistance movements and the Palestinian Authority.

Concerning the resistance movements, the donors apparently seek to pit the public and the resistance movements taking into account the presumption that the movements will refuse to relinquish their rightful stances and therefore the donations may not reach the people.

Concerning the Palestinian Authority, the donations would reach the Ramallah-based authority if only it concedes to the conditions of the future Israeli government regarding new settlements in the West Bank and especially in Beit ul-Moqaddas.

Above all, the conference would have a direct negative impact on the process of reconciliation among the Palestinian groups and would destroy the preparations set in Thursday Palestinian meeting in Cairo. In that case, the host (Egypt) has put through its own net.

With the donors conditioning the transfer of money to the PA, Egypt risks to lose a neutral face it needs to broker the inter-Palestinian reconciliation.

The Cairo agreement seems to have faced the fate of the 2007 Mecca agreement earlier between the Fatah and Hamas.