New Démarche Starts Today on Palestinians

WASHINGTON — American diplomats in Israel will start today to meet with members of the Palestinian Fatah Party in a campaign to get Hamas, with whom they will share power, to recognize Israel and renounce terrorism.

The new diplomatic push is in anticipation of Secretary of State Rice's trip to the region, scheduled to start Friday, and in reaction to this weekend's announcement that the two Palestinian Arab parties will share power in a unity government.

In many ways the new diplomatic campaign is making the best of a strategy that collapsed this weekend when the Fatah-affiliated president, Mahmoud Abbas, forged a deal to create a unity government with Hamas, the Iranianbacked group that the State Department and Congress still designate as a terrorist organization. Ms. Rice had hoped to bolster Mr. Abbas by authorizing money for training and arms. Elections endorsed by Ms. Rice in 2005 resulted in the ascendancy of the Hamas government of the Palestinian Authority in January 2006; since then, Ms. Rice has sought to unseat or change that government. The new American strategy will focus largely on using financial and diplomatic leverage to persuade Hamas to change its ways. For example, the Treasury Department has no plans to lift sanctions that have prevented banks from providing credit or cash to the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Authority since January 2006. That stick and others, such as a pledge from America and Europe to deny funds to the new unity government directly, will be part of a hard sell for the Americans, according to State Department officials.

"We will be talking to all of the parties other than Hamas and explaining that the conditions remain," a State Department official said yesterday. "The international solidarity remains and the Palestinian Authority is not getting anything as long as Hamas does not meet the Quartet conditions."

Those conditions, outlined first in 2003 by America, Europe, Russia and the United Nations — a grouping known as the Quartet — stipulate that the Palestinian Authority must first recognize Israel, recognize prior agreements forged with Israel and renounce terrorism.

"Acceptance of the Quartet principles must continue to be the measure of support to any new Palestinian Authority government," a State Department spokeswoman, Nancy Beck, said yesterday.

On Saturday, President Abbas and the Hamas-affiliated Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniya, finalized the unity government they had been negotiating since February at the behest of the Saudis. The Israeli cabinet yesterday stipulated that it would meet with members of Fatah to discuss humanitarian issues, but not to start negotiations with the unity government.

"This is a government that does not accept the conditions of the international community and sees terror as a legitimate goal," Prime Minister Olmert said yesterday.

Of interest to American and Israeli officials in the new government will be one of their old partners in the Oslo process from the 1990s, Mohammed Dahlan. Mr. Dahlan, the chief of the Gaza security service under Yasser Arafat, met regularly with the CIA and Israeli intelligence during the Oslo years as part of a regular security dialogue that broke apart after the outbreak of the second Intifada. He also arrested numerous members of Hamas at the time as part of his job in preventing terrorism. Yesterday, one American official said Mr. Dahlan would be on the list of people consulted in the new diplomatic initiative.

One Israeli official yesterday said that the new unity government is troubling to Jerusalem in large part because the new agreement gives the Hamas controlled legislature an effective veto on any peace negotiations that would be forged in the future by President Abbas, who regularly meets with Israeli officials. "This is the part of the deal that is really unacceptable," this official said.

The new unity government also reasserts the right of Palestinian refugees outside of the Palestinian territories to return to their family homes in pre-1967 Israel. The so-called right of return was invoked at the end of the Oslo process by Arafat, but earlier understandings would have had Israel and America creating a fund to compensate the families of Palestinian Arabs who lost homes during the 1948 war that created the Jewish state.